


Proto Type

by Recidiva



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drama, F/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5891875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recidiva/pseuds/Recidiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from Julie5 asking for a side story based on a definitely-not-interested Shepard and an interested Javik based on a conversation with Javik in my story "Delicate Subject"</p><p>So here's a new Shepard in a canon universe and a bunch of head canon Prothean lore.</p><p>Story starts at the "From Ashes" DLC retrieval of Javik and continues on through the ME3 world.</p><p>It's a romance, but not fluffy so much as pointy and bickery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Julie5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julie5/gifts).



Viola Shepard was irritated and angry, which was not unusual. What was unusual was feeling irritated and angry in concert with helplessness.

It was hard for her to not take this personally. A cycle was 50,000 years. Turians had been a spacefaring race for thousands of years. Asari and Salarians for longer.

Humans were the latest newcomers, and it seemed that the human leap to space flight had put them exactly on the cusp of being reaped along with the civilizations that had much longer to enjoy the benefits.

Long enough to be established, infuriating, entitled and complacent.

By the time the humans were fighting the First Contact War against a civilization far advanced of their own, admittedly superior predators…something Garrus could never help pointing out…the Reapers were already making their first moves.

If humans had laid low for a few hundred more years, they would have topped the charts in the next cycle.

She was terribly sick of her bad luck.

She was also exasperated that even though Garrus was a superior predator, his people had their heads up their plated asses, fringe included, and he was about the only reasonable Turian she knew.

She also only knew one reasonable Asari.

She only knew one reasonable Salarian.

She knew a shitload of unreasonable humans.

Now she had one Prothean to add to the list. Reasonable or unreasonable she did not know. She only knew that Cerberus troops were shooting at them and she obligingly shot back with her team of solitary reasonable sentient creatures – Garrus and Liara.

Garrus had grown up fast. When she’d met him he’d seemed a rebellious teen, then he made the swerve into merciless vigilante, and now he was pretty much self-appointed Dad to the Normandy crew. He was making some comment about whether or not she needed to take a…bathroom break…while waiting for Cerberus to send more people to shoot at them.

Bathroom…fucking…break?

She said drily “Garrus, if you need to…”

Garrus sounded vaguely insulted and as disingenuous as when he’d asked Liara about whether or not she’d found dinosaurs “Who, me?”

She aimed at the new shuttle, satisfying explosions of Cerberus heads while still attempting to deploy. That had to be disheartening to the next guy who has to try to jump out as a solitary target. “Yes, you. Or are Turian bladders superior to human and Asari?”

Everyone knew the answer to that one.

Garrus said with a drawl “Turian bladders, and Turian armor. Of course.”

She made a face, drew down on the next Cerberus head “Are you telling me that Turian armor has a fucking catheter?”

He said with some more disingenuous shock and overly helpful concern “And yours doesn’t. That’s why I asked.”

She laughed and then said “Fuck you, Vakarian.”

More shots, a few reaves, a short laugh from Liara, who said “I don’t know, sounds good about right now. I might be jealous.”

Viola said “Dammit, T’Soni, do not encourage his plated arrogant ass.”

Liara scoffed and said “I think someone else already took care of that.”

Garrus laughed, and the following silence, no whine of approaching transport, no gunfire, made them all come cautiously out of cover. 

She hoped they had enough information to open the pod. Prothean visions had knocked her brain out of alignment. Again. Everything had the psychic overlay she had experienced after the beacon, blurred and indistinct edges, throbbing unclear visions that seemed to bloom from familiar shapes into representatives of past terror, prophets of future horror. She did not want to go searching for more Prothean screams in the silent compound.

This was Liara’s show, so Viola let her take the lead on the pod. Liara warned them that it might take the Prothean some time to regain consciousness…

Viola looked down at the Prothean’s face, saw energy ripple over his skin….aaaaand they were all on their asses from a wide blast of Prothean biotics. 

She’d had mornings like that. She sympathized, but it did not help her head.

She had never been the best at diplomacy. He was powerful enough to take them all down, he needed to be contained. She had her own damned biotics.

Liara must have seen it on Viola’s face as she stood to a crouch and began to launch herself at the 50,000 year old menace that gave her a headache. She heard a frantic “Shepard, NO!” from Liara, but Viola had really gotten where she’d gotten in this galaxy by mostly ignoring directives like that.

Garrus moved to restrain Liara from attempting to restrain Shepard, which was for Liara’s benefit.

Thanks Dad.

Viola dove at the stumbling Prothean and tackled him, which provoked an angry roar and another skin tingling warning of biotics.

That was fine, she had her own skin tingling and she was angry and in pain and she usually won when that happened.

She was also aware that he was much weaker than his normal strength. Defrosting had to take it out of the guy.

She’d seen Jack barrel through mechs straight out of cryo though, so she did not want to chance this Prothean injuring Liara or Garrus. She countered his biotic pulse with her own, resulting in them bouncing a bit. That was fine with her, he was on the bottom, her hands gripped tightly around his wrists, skin vibrating from biotics and a new texture of skin, still cold and slick. It would have been funny if she hadn’t been straining to hear approaching Cerberus craft. She got his hands behind his back and his face was thrust into the grate of the walkway by a strategic shift of her weight forward and down.

She said in a military bark she hoped would cross cultural lines “Your story is complicated. I don’t have time for it. Not right now. Right now people are coming to kill us. You went to sleep in a dangerous world, you woke up in one. I can make it slightly less dangerous for you so that you have time to tell your complicated story. Then you can choose whether or not to make it dangerous for Reapers. Can you understand me?”

She heard a muffled deep voice “Yes.”

Oh good. She’d realized partway through her speech that of course he did not have a translator.

She said “Good. People are arriving to shoot at us soon. We have a shuttle. Will you accompany me to my ship?”

The same “Yes” rose up and she stood immediately. The aftermath of his biotics had not entirely cleared from her skin and even when she stepped away her hands were humming. Add in adrenaline, the instinct to not be out in the open and the Prothean bullshit already swimming in her head, and her instinct was to run. She ran, then they all ran, Garrus taking up the rear, his wide armored back and fabled Turian armor guarding those in front of him from assault and no doubt making sure the Prothean did not make a threatening move toward her or Liara. He made sure everyone made it in before he got in himself.

She figured that had done enough damage to human-Prothean relations, so she would let Liara take it from here.

The Prothean was mostly useful for his potential knowledge about the Crucible, and Liara knew more about those plans than she did. She expected the tumult of her nervous system to settle by the time they hit the Normandy in deliberate silence, the Prothean’s eyes staring at Shepard.

Viola did not stare back. She only met Garrus’s eyes, who shook his head, shrugged and set his shoulders, watching to make sure violence did not erupt from any source.

Liara said tentatively “Are you in any pain?”

The Prothean ignored her.

Liara waited a moment and said slightly louder “Is there anything that you need?”

The Prothean ignored her.

Viola got quietly pissed off but she had started that way and that was a baseline experience not deserving special notice. If he was sitting still and not knocking them on their asses she was okay with it. Liara could handle rudeness, even if it made Viola want to deck him. Just one eye. He had three more.

It was a short ride and she spent it fuming and dizzy. The Prothean spent it staring. Liara was the most uncomfortable of Asari. Garrus was ultimately amused.

They landed and Garrus stood, reached out to Shepard and said “Give me your rifle.”

She handed it over. She’d probably knocked his baby too hard on something and he had to give her a bottle and rock her to sleep. He had adopted her weapons since they had been on the SR-1 and he’d noticed a scratch that she thought gave the gun character, which was code for not caring about a scratch. He had stated it could be easily buffed out. She appreciated it. She wanted to head to the makeshift gym she had in the shuttle bay near Vega to work the frustration and adrenaline out of her system, get the film of biotics off her skin somehow. That spot was as close to sanctuary as she got.

She said with old habit of a worn-thin but comforting joke “Don’t let her stay out too late. Don’t feed her after midnight.”

Garrus nodded with mock weariness, hefted the huge rifle as though she were nothing and with a final look at the menacing Prothean, left the shuttle to maintain her baby and his babies, tuck them in and let them recover.

Viola unfortunately was the ranking officer and could not afford to abandon a recalcitrant Prothean and a sensitive Asari and expect all to go well.

She sighed, consigned herself to extended irritation and addressed the Prothean directly “Liara is my Prothean expert. Are you going to talk to her?”

He said “No.”

She spared Liara a glance, but didn’t have the time to be sympathetic, though Liara’s face was dispirited, no doubt blaming that answer on Viola’s flying tackle. Viola asked with a hint of aggression, expecting a no “Are you going to talk to me?”

He almost smiled and his voice was shaded with the same stubborn as hers “Yes.”

Now Liara’s face looked more insulted than dispirited.

Oh boy. A new adopted Prothean. Maybe Garrus could put him to bed next to the rifles and hope he woke up in a better mood.

She was sore, tired, hungry and running on a nervous system that felt as stable as razor wire. She stood, slapped her thighs and said “All right then. If you would follow me. This is my ship, the Normandy. My name is Commander Viola Shepard. Your name is?”

He stood and said “Javik.”

She started to walk and said “Welcome aboard, Javik.”

She left Liara to decide whether or not to follow, if she wanted to take notes that was fine, but gave her no signal either way. As Viola walked off the shuttle there was a security detail lined up and armed. She felt a surge in her irritation, moving back and covering the shuttle entrance with her body. “Explain.” It was not a voice that welcomed the wrong explanation.

Henrik Vache said in explanation “Commander. Contact protocol with a new species. Assume hostility.”

She said brusquely “Damned right he’s hostile, that’s why we need him.” Henrik had no response and said “My ship. My decision. He is under my protection and I will make the determination as to whether he stays here or leaves of his own accord. What the hell is wrong with you? Fuck contact protocol. He is a diplomat. I’m going to do you a favor and call this a diplomatic salute and you are going to step out of my way and if in the future you have a call to make regarding who I bring onto my own ship, you will wait until I inform you that your participation is required.”

She started walking and expected Henrik and his detail to get out of her way, and they did.

She noticed Garrus leaning against a wall and watching, Vega pausing in his pull-ups to take this in, Cortez curious, embarrassed security personnel trying to shift their guns to look respectful and not menacing.

She felt another urge to get behind cover metaphorically and out of wide open spaces where anything could happen. Living spaces were getting spare, so she brought him to the cargo space where Grunt had lived. She asked a few rapid fire maintenance questions. To all questions of hunger or thirst or being tired he gave a rapid fire negative.

Liara said in an attempt to be helpful “I’ll…go get a few samples of provisions. Protheans are levo chirality so Asari and human rations should work.”

Viola sighed heavily at the implications of being 50,000 years past where food had evolved along with a species to provide nutrition.

Javik said the first helpful thing he had managed “Asari physiology is comparable. I should be able to metabolize their food.”

Liara took that bit and left, looking not unlike Henrik.

After the series of tense and life threatening moments, Viola’s mind went blank. He stared at her for a while longer but it was not menacing. He eased down slowly to a sitting position and said in a voice that for the first time was not reminiscent of asshole “You are tired. Sit.”

That they could agree on. It went against the grain to be told what to do, but it went against exhausted grain to stand much longer. There was something seriously wrong with her head. Not a headache, but a bubbling distortion that was radiating with the retreat of adrenaline. She looked at him and tried to focus, but she saw shadow images break from him, streaming in different directions, seemingly different people, all Prothean shaped but distinct from him. She sensed stories, screams and urgings from the shadow Protheans. She blinked, closed her eyes, sat heavily across the room from him and tried to see him as a single entity.

This space was reminiscent of Grunt, waking up Grunt, waking up Grunt and having him attack.

One silent Prothean figure with his eyes on her separated from the streaming images with the grace of a hunter, coming closer and fuck she was going to die, the screams and urgings of other Protheans warning her of danger.

She felt the sinking sickness of misreading and misinterpreting every moment that brought her to death. Attempting to ward him off resulted in only flailing and sliding sideways. She did not accept that she was going to die, so she reached for her pistol as she had with Grunt. The Prothean’s hand disarmed her calmly and easily, because there was no strength in her wrist. She tried to summon a biotic surge or call to EDI, but was interrupted when three warm fingers on each of her cheekbones steadied her and guided her eyes to look into gold and black, double pupil infinity.

Relief from dizziness, from rising bile, from his face separating into more faces. 

Also not dead.

Javik said calmly, almost warmly “I will not harm you.”

She began to twist her face back, but he held her still. She said “What the hell is going on?”

His fingers tightened and he appeared to concentrate as he said “Be still.”

She was temporarily appeased by not being dead and having the writhing mass of psychic disorientation fade progressively as he kept eye contact. She tried and was better able to be still, but then biotics began to hum along her skin, crackling along her face and sparking on his fingertips. He repeated “Be still” emphatically.

She said with a slight edge of panic “I’m not doing that.” The panic led to “I don’t think I’m doing that. Why am I doing that? What the hell is going on?”

It seemed she had effectively broken his concentration. Her nausea surged, dizziness and the roiling in her mind returned. He said with a contemptuous bite “I am attempting to repair your memory. Communication is regrettably still primitive in this cycle. You have never touched a Prothean. I have never touched a human. I shall do my best but you Must. Be. Still.”

She sat still, vaguely panicked, staring at him and starting to pant.

She kinda needed her brain.

He blinked, and she think almost rolled his eyes and he said “Still your mind. Still your body.” A sharp crackle arced to his knuckles from her skin and he said “Still your biotics.”

She tried to cooperate with whatever he was doing, relaxed, took a deep swallow and once the fear and panic had been reduced, she managed to still the biotics on her face, though her hands still crackled and hummed with them. She spent long, uncomfortably intimate moments with the realization that he was in her head.

He reiterated “I will do you no harm.”

She retorted “That’s lovely that you know that, but I don’t.”

He’d apparently had it with her crap because with one psychic twist that seemed to originate in her spine, consciousness seemed to choke down to a small space in the dark, and the rest of her attention was taken up with paced breathing, cooled and calmed skin, and hypnotic focus on the touch of six fingertips and four eyes. She was there timelessly and unquestioningly until some satisfaction twisted his odd lips into five distinct sections instead of two.

His fingertips withdrew from her cheekbones and his eyes pulled back and consciousness swarmed back in unhampered by the nausea and scattered visions that had marked her going into Prothean space.

She was definitely herself because her first words were “Do that again and I’ll kill you.” He seemed to approve. She said “What did you do?”

He said calmly “I speak your language but there are no words in your language for what I did.”

She said threateningly “Try.”

He considered a moment and then said “Protheans can communicate through direct perception. Physical objects have a history, a trajectory. Organic beings have a code. We evolved to be able to detect that information. Protheans alone had this ability. It was something that made us superior to other civilizations in our cycle, what made us rulers. There are no liars among Protheans, only among other species.”

She considered that a moment and said “Well…that sucks. The inability to lie sounds terrible. I am sorry for you guys.”

His blink was a measured thing and then he said “It appears you are good at it.”

She grinned “Damned right I am.”

He stated “Protheans receive information instantaneously and are able to store and process that information instantaneously. It is available in processed, compressed form. In Protheans directly received information is stored as truth. Sensory information is stored as conjecture. It appears humans have no mechanism to receive Prothean truth and it is all categorized as conjecture.” She thought she should be insulted but she could not really argue with that. He continued “The beacon, the images of my last moments before sleep placed in your head, my skin, my reaching out to attack you as an enemy with biotics, your mind has struggled to assimilate buried and rediscovered truths from the beacon simultaneously, with no way to categorize or control the information.”

She said “Did you just attempt to tell me somewhat elegantly that I have a tiny brain?”

His voice was warmer “Perhaps. You had input intended for a different mental structure. You have senses and a brain intended to interpret information received through time-defined linear senses. A section of the mind dedicated to touch. A section dedicated to sound. Specialized. Organized. Indexed according to sequence defined by how it was experienced. Prothean information is not broken down into sensory input, and the data contains conclusions, analysis inherent in the data, as a Prothean would experience it. Your mind has been attempting to process the information, break it down into sensory components, but there is more there than is encompassed in your five senses and you have no time index for organization. Seeing my face gave you reference points to Prothean faces, corresponding to images inside the beacon information. Your human mind attempted to recall as a human mind would, but those images were not stored in human fashion. There are no words in your language and this is a simplistic, barbaric comparison, but it is as though a library was placed in your mind. You have seen perhaps only the covers of a few volumes. There is so much information there that if you were to experience it in a temporal linear fashion it would take years. The more contact you have with Reapers and now with a Prothean, the more that information will assert itself as relevant. I have closed the books, placed them on shelves. Your mind will not experience so many truths simultaneously.”

She tried to sort through that, the words made sense. If she broke it down she could think that he was a musical composer trying to explain sound to a person who only experienced bewildering thumping vibration. He had a definite tone of pity to his explanation. She had to start somewhere “Read my physiology?”

His pity faded and he seemed more smug “Another Prothean ability.” She heard the implied ‘You would not understand.’

She asked “So…were you busy just sorting my shelves or did you decide to look around, considering it is 50,000 years since you have been up on current events and you’re dealing with a barbaric species that can lie?”

He blinked slowly and said evenly with a shine of smug “I looked around. Much of it was available immediately when you touched me on the planet surface.”

She nodded sagely. Fuck. She asked in Commander voice “So what do you think of current events? Do you like what you see?”

They were physically close. She accepted that he had been in her head because there was nothing she could do about that, now realized she had bypassed several levels of ‘getting to know you’ and was talking as though she knew him, which was not the same as him knowing her. He hadn’t killed her and his explanation seemed plausible. She realized her wording and tone and it seemed so did he. Without a translator. “Do you like what you see” had been a maladroit blunder and it had tumbled out of her mouth without thought.

He leaned in and down, hands reaching out to rest on either side of her head. Not touching, but if she moved, they would be. Deep tones drawled “I like what I see.”

She might be a human capable of only conjecture, but despite 50,000 years of divergent species, there was no mistaking that tone.

There was also no mistaking that she had habits in place for discouraging that tone. She had successfully fended off flirtations and advances from men, women, different species and different approaches until she had it down. It had the same effect of challenging her to a spar or a shooting match. Confidence. She said in Commander voice “Good. I hope you find your place on the Normandy soon. If you have any questions that were not answered by looking around, please ask.” She ignored the close quarters as though they were insignificant, even though she had a sinking feeling they were not, in fact, insignificant.

He looked down at her and his eyes were hooded, voice warm “I will ask. It would be better if I could show you through touch.”

That absolutely did not sound good and she would not let it sound good. She said diplomatically “That will not be necessary. Thank you for your assistance in organizing my memory.”

He said solemnly “That work is not yet done.”

She lost control over her face, her brow shot up and she said “Oh come on. Feels done to me.”

He watched her face and they were both breathing a little harder than normal, likely because they were close enough to compete for the same air. He said intently “I choose to remain. I do not entirely understand what happened, but I do believe you will have more episodes of fugue. Contact with me and unlocking images from the beacon cannot be reversed. I believe you need me, Viola.” Her name sounded as though he were exploring the vowels with his tongue.

No. She did not need or want a librarian. She’d keep her bubbling brain to herself. If she knew what was happening it wouldn’t be so terrifying. She was grateful he’d explained but she had managed with this in her head for years. She said succinctly “Liara needs you to help her with the Crucible.”

He responded “I know nothing of the Crucible.” All personal concerns were dismissed and her professional heart sank as he said “There were rumors in my time. We never finished it.”

She asked with dimming hope “Do you know what it does?”

He said with regret and it sounded genuine, harsh voice and harsh face softening to express acknowledgment of her fight, his failure “I do not. I am a warrior, not a scientist. By the time of the neutron bombardment where you call Eden Prime, all travel and communication with other worlds had already been decimated. There is much I do not know.”

In that moment they were both Commanders with losses and goals. She had often felt others could not understand the burden she carried, but in this man, it was she that could not understand his burdens. 

Her biotics were in fact out of her control as she felt a surge in her hands and a vibrating sear along her spine. If he was right and close contact with him made whatever the hell had exploded in her head act out, the answer was to stay the hell away from him. That she could do.

She said to create distance “So I should not have tackled you is today’s takeaway lesson.”

He stood and stepped back, allowing her to stand. He said in the same tone of tactical appraisal “Tackling me was your best option. I can hope that will be true again.”

She shook her head “Not going to happen.”

He looked at her and she could swear there was affection, the same instinct she had when Garrus looked at her after she had said something stupid. Affection and confidence felt the same across species, it seemed. He said “For now. There is much you do not understand about me, and some things you do. There are many things I understand about you and some that I do not. When you need me, come to me.”

She heaved a heavy sigh and said “I need you to shoot things, Javik. Besides, you could be lying to me.”

Javik said with what she swore was disingenuous Prothean because she knew exactly what disingenuous Turian sounded like “I told you Protheans did not lie.”

She said to clarify her understanding of the potential practice “They didn’t lie to each other. They probably lied to other species all the time.”

Javik’s smile made her identify the exit and walk to it without haste, but with purpose.


	2. Chapter 2

Viola’s problems had multiplied instead of diminished. Her trend of taking things personally was extended, because this was in fact personal. The inside of her head, the surface of her skin, and a Prothean.

She headed to the shuttle bay. She should probably eat something first or take off her armor, but she preferred to push herself, extend a challenge. She’d been on enough missions where shit didn’t go south so much as straight down to know it was a useful stamina practice. 

She missed Thane. His advice about meditation had not so much fallen on deaf ears as created deaf ears and boredom, but the man was hell in a spar, and they had been able to spar often, his biotics and hers well matched. He had taught her a great deal, generous with his technique. He had said she had taught him a great deal as well and she had never known if that was politeness, but earning Thane’s respect and politeness had been enough to not need to know the answer to that question. Not knowing where he was evoked a hollow sense of personal and professional failure. 

She’d just been through a shitty day and her biotics were out of control. Her solution to problems was not to cut back, but to double her load. When she was stressed, which was pretty much always, she preferred to push herself until she dropped. Just one extra special fuck you to the limitations her body seemed to demand.

Vega was used to her doing this by now. They had a friendly and co-dependently competitive relationship that suited her. Her showing up to knock around a heavy bag was a usual occurrence. 

Since Thane she had not found a suitable spar partner. She’d gotten spoiled by someone who was so controlled in a fight he never allowed injury to himself or caused one in her. Bloodying Vega’s nose had made her aware that she was now addressing power instead of finesse. She had expected him to duck. They were going to need power and she did not perhaps deserve finesse, but she missed it.

She had to work with what she had.

Vega was a gossip. Not a flagrant gossip, but he was ready to trade what he knew of the crew, which was a lot, for her opinion and state of mind. She could trust him. He had everyone’s best interests in mind. He was not indiscreet, would not betray her confidence, he just wanted the crew to not catch the rough side of her temper. She approved. Getting used to her command style was a process. Simple rule, do your job with excellence. Failing that, temper was the consequence. He could afford to be drinking and card playing buddies with people she couldn’t, and he’d been on the Normandy longer than she had this time around. This pissed her off with the fresh reminder of what she could have done with this ship for six months instead of sitting on her ass.

Sitting on her ass was never going to be her solution again.

She resented the Alliance and she feared for their survival.

Thinking of the mission in front of her, Wrex had, in her opinion, personally betrayed her, whereas the Primarch had shoved a blade into her liver professionally and not personally. The Dalatrass was shit scraped over toast.

Reverse the Genophage.

Build the Crucible.

She had not enough power and not enough finesse and seething resentment and anger were going to have to fuel those engines.

She stood in front of the heavy bag, looking at the expanse of mirrored tile along one wall. Can’t be competitive without being narcissistic, she supposed. The mirrors were theoretically for checking form, but she and Vega looked up too often while they were holding still for that. Vanity seemed to be a necessary component of competition. 

Better than slothful and slovenly.

Back in the sheltered alcove alone she had a moment to see herself, appropriately scary looking with smears of blood, dirt and sweat, military utilitarian cut to her brown hair, brown eyes that for years had looked severe in expression and position. She thought of herself as a generic average of human racial lines, where skin, hair and eyes tended toward the darker shades. By all accounts a dominant allele in every slot.

She was not a recessive person.

She had seen something in her biotics that disturbed her, while discussing dominant and recessive.

Her biotics were blue, a reave resulted in purple waves.

She’d seen hybrid shades of green bloom from her hands, veins and shards of the same green that had pulsed from Javik’s skin.

Whatever he’d hit her with had fucked up her implant the same way touching his skin had fucked up her head.

She stopped staring at herself and looked down, opened her hands and hoped she had imagined it in her hallucinations or compulsory playback or whatever the hell had happened.

She could still feel biotic vibrations under her skin, along her nerves, crackling when she bent her spine.

C’mon, Martin, help me out here.

She prayed to her favorite patron saint. St. Martin of Tours was the patron of the military, beggars and alcoholics. She’d learned of the man from one of her drill instructors, who would tell the story of Martin cutting his cloak in half in the middle of winter to give to a beggar. That was the soul of a soldier in the Alliance, something to aspire to, something to idealize.

Since the majority of people she knew were in the military, her job seemed to involve a great deal of begging and she also knew several career military that were also alcoholics, he seemed the most likely person to pray to, with the added bonus that praying to someone named “Martin” just seemed so parochial that the prayer was ironically comforting to her, to be appealing to a disaffected soldier with half a cloak, freezing his ass off and likely cursing his life choices. 

Martin had lived, had made choices, had been a human being, which was reassuringly historical compared to the lack of solid data about most Gods, the Asari Goddess, Turian Spirits and the Drell pantheon. Thane, a man of vanity and finesse, had earned his Gods and she had earned Martin.

Martin’s cold ass was company but not assistance, and the end result of prayer to him was a reminder that she was it and the cavalry was not coming over the metaphoric hill with whole cloaks.

Martin was true to form today.

At first she saw the familiar and whole blue field when she attempted a biotic frosting on her skin, but as soon as she began to apply any more force or direction the blue fractured with inclusions of green and an internal uncontrolled surge that forced its way out and made itself known, green erupting like geysers through the surface in fractal disarray.

She stood, silently seething, willing the biotics to recede, which they did, but she could feel residual racing along nerves, imagining being grounded by her own bones, which vibrated with the effort of absorption.

Fucking Martin.

She worked out with fists and biotics, pummeling the reinforced heavy bag in a sequence she’d developed over the years.

She whittled her fury away until her main experience was exhaustion and focus, working out the exact speed and timing used to push the bag just hard enough to be an obstacle without being a menace, push herself just hard enough to feel the satisfaction of creating and maneuvering the intricate obstacle course.

Martin was still being an ass and the green intensified instead of fading.

She now needed a Prothean God to bitch to and about.

Unfortunately that would require faith in Protheans, which she did not want to nurture.

She could go to Karin Chakwas and confess she might be compromised. She could go to Liara and ask her advice about her biotics. She should probably do both of those things but instead she was going to go another round with a heavy bag, one more obstacle course, and when she almost missed her first pass, when the bag whispered against her skin where it shouldn’t, she would call it a workout. Sweat streaming, it took forty-five more minutes before she decided she was done. Her hands were slippery with blood and sweat, her eyes were stinging from the habitual attempt to rub sweat from her eyes, resulting in depositing more sweat and blood from her knuckles.

She was tired and she was done with soldiering and begging for the day, she was going to have dinner, take a few shots even though she could never manage to be an alcoholic because she didn’t really have the time for it, and hope that tomorrow would be somewhat less green.

Vega had learned her moods and no longer attempted to admonish her for not wrapping her hands. He didn’t have a word to say about her technique any longer, and it seemed he had known well enough to wait until she was done before probing for details on a Prothean.

As she stalked out he called “Hey, Lola. Security’s got a problem with your diplomat.”

She said with implied sneer “New problem since I got here or same problem when we disembarked.”

He clarified “Oh, same problem. So I gotta be nice to the guy?”

She made a face “No need. As far as I can tell he’s got all the problems of a new recruit that knows nothing about how things work on this boat with the added bonus of having the obnoxious, recalcitrant opinions of a veteran. That’s my problem though, not yours. He won’t be nice to you, so just be your charming, irritating self.”

Vega brightened at the granted freedom of expression “Heard you tackled him.”

She snorted “Yeah. Liara’s going to be irritated for a bit. He might be a diplomat. I’m not.”

He said with mock shock “Doesn’t seem like people being irritated with you bothers you much.”

She shrugged “As long as they’re not shooting at me.” That was about all the socialization she could manage and she stalked off, having dumped some anger and frustration ballast but feeling them resurge and multiply with reopening of the subject, loss of focus on physical obstacles and turning back to reality.

With a near intolerably hot shower that was also a dare and a distraction of proven potency, she told herself she was going to forget about the change in biotics color and just make sure that the next time she used them in the field, they did what they were supposed to do. If they didn’t, she had her rifle. Concurrent talent with sniper rifle and biotics was rare, but she’d insisted on training herself in the spirit of doubling her burdens and excelling. Garrus always went with her because she was a relative idiot at technical tasks and it had suited all three of his chosen personas, rebel, vigilante and now Dad to be able to take over and provide a unique service. In fact on the SR1 she had always brought out Garrus and Tali for the technical boost.

It really, really pissed Viola off that she did not have the capacity or training for hacking and had stood over some impossible to open containers, out of Omni-gel, wasting ammo on shooting the thing before she left in disgust. Garrus and Tali had learned to leave a room fast if they’d failed a hack. 

They always had Medigel. She suspected Garrus arranged for extra Omni-gel ultimately, likely bartering his own gear for extra stock. None of the ricochets had done permanent damage. Viola herself had taken most of the hits. Eventually she had stopped trying to shoot weapons lockers and upgrade caches, but only after she’d thoroughly field tested every single type of container and different types of ammo. She’d had great hopes for Polonium rounds…

She did eventually learn, sometimes, but in her opinion many people were not open to new problem solving techniques and a few ricochets were worth the chance at discovery and the blessed relief of pulling a trigger and potentially blasting the hell out of something.

It did not always work on weapons caches but it worked just fine on people.

She wished Ashley were still around to bitch about Shepard’s unprofessional behavior.

She wished Kaidan were not in Huerta fighting for his life.

Martin in hindsight was not all that helpful, and that is likely why she gave him her lack of faith. Always rewarded.

She had a further mechanic for her anger. She tended to outwardly direct it rather than inwardly direct it, and she had many, many targets.

She changed her plan in the spirit of least amount of effort, grabbed a levo nutrient paste packet and didn’t bother with the alcohol, fell asleep gratifyingly quickly.

Like nearly every other mortal of human origin she was prone to nightmares, and she had them that night, disjointed golden infinity eyes in multitudes of faces, without context other than horror, new images that bubbled up through her new awareness. She now knew Prothean blood was red. She saw a great deal of it.

Final Prothean memories were composed of despair and pain, each message and warning dripping with it.

Gasping awake on choking breath she got immediately out of bed and spent the rest of the night until chow preparing for their next mission, which was a comparatively relaxing endeavor, even if it seemed impossible. Cure the Genophage. She wanted it for Wrex and Grunt. Not just for the coming fight, but because looming catastrophe to every species put a premium on survival as a basic right. She could use a bunch of pissed off Krogan with offspring to defend.

Occasionally she’d turn her hand, look at it like a traitor under interrogation and demand that it bloom blue. Every time she tried the blue gave her hope and then the green insinuated itself into the energy matrix. Her nerves surged with it, crackling light thrown off with little psychic effort.

What the fuck did that asshole do when he got into her head?

She was going to kill him herself and finally she saw the bright side of his not knowing a damned thing about the Crucible or the Catalyst. If she killed him that was fine because he was of no Martin-damned use anyway.

She always went to morning mess because it was one of the times in command where her crew could always find her and let her know about problems that had developed overnight or over time. Enough developing problems of a social or tactical nature had been identified and handled quietly over coffee and the guise of casual conversation that she found it to be vital to her command. It proved she was disciplined and set an example. During the day she made the rounds, talked to everyone, but when she sought people out she had an agenda. She left spaces where other people could have an agenda and seek her out without them feeling they were interrupting anything special. 

She was not big on breakfast, so she nursed coffee and a data pad, her usual routine. Karin came by to sit across from her. That was also Karin’s style, a social check in usually stood for her briefing and Karin was good company. Steadying. She almost never did anything to piss Viola off and that was an unusual feat. She’d patched Viola up enough times that Viola gave her a pass on being annoyed at required medical maintenance. Funny how dying made routine checks seem reasonable and even a luxury. 

Karin gave Javik an anecdotally clean bill of health, verification that he was levo, could eat levo rations and metabolize them, would respond to Medigel on spot testing.

Viola asked “What about his…touching thing?”

Karin raised a brow “What…touching thing?”

Viola frowned and said “You did not touch him, he did not touch you?”

Karin shook her head “No. I was gloved. He did not touch me.”

Viola said with a sigh “Did he explain his method of physiological…hell I don’t have words.”

Javik said from unreasonably far away, coming around the corner from his adopted quarters “That is because human language is barbaric.”

Viola sighed. Karin seemed amused. Viola was irritated immediately at being caught in essence gossiping. Karin said “He has excellent hearing.”

Viola nodded. Clearly. She sipped coffee and hoped they would both go away.

They did not. Karin asked him politely “I trust you had a good first night on board?”

Javik responded “The drive core is inefficient and the ship is loud due to that. There are other ship systems creating noise as a symptom of engineering failure.”

Viola narrowed her eyes, wanting to stay out of it but the words “She’s a starship. They’re loud.”

Javik said flatly “This one is loud.”

She asked with sweet concern “Yours was quiet?”

He nodded. She said “Too bad you lost it, huh?” with false sympathy.

Javik stared at her. Prothean face was synonymous with Skyllian face.

Karin was too used to her bullshit to be flustered by Shepard, so Viola went back to her coffee, resurgent hope that they would entertain each other or go away.

Javik said as helpfully as she had been sympathetic “Commander, if you have any questions regarding my…touching thing…please ask me.”

Viola said as helpfully “Just trying to get a medical opinion.”

Karin said with curiosity “As I have no idea what you are talking about, I have no medical opinion.”

Javik informed Karin “I am able to garner direct information through touch. I am able to impart information through touch. It would be helpful if I were able to install water tables, otherwise I am at risk of too much extraneous information that I am unable to clear.” Viola thought his voice shifted to indicate herself as too much extraneous information. There they were agreed. She would extricate herself as soon as possible from this conversation. She would get him off the ship at the first opportunity.

Karin said “That is fascinating. I will authorize that as a medical necessity, I had no idea. Is there anything else I can do to accommodate you? If you would help me with an explanation and analysis, in case you end up in my Med Bay with an injury, I would like to be able to navigate preserving that system.”

Javik sounded helpful, almost pitying and grudgingly vulnerable “Your offer is appreciated. I am not a scientist or a doctor, I was never trained in Prothean physiology, I have never been injured to that extent. I believe it resides in the nervous system and with your scans, potential reconstruction would be according to that template. I did not mention my ability as a medical concern as I can provide no insight into its mechanic. I will be able to avoid touch in daily practice. I will be able to manage any accidental contact.”

Viola said helpfully “You could get him some earplugs. I’m assuming he is also not an engineer and cannot provide schematics for adjusting our overly loud drive core. Javik, if you want to go looking for a Prothean ship, you and Liara can take the shuttle, go on an adventure.” She tried to make it sound like fun. She did not look at him or Karin.

Javik and Karin were silent, Javik speaking first, smoothly “Dr. Chakwas, as Commander Shepard was discussing my ability to read physiology through touch for your medical opinion, I am curious about your opinion as well. Has Commander Shepard’s encounter with me resulted in further loss of control of her biotics or hallucinations? That would be unfortunate. I hope to remedy what damage has been done through inadvisable contact.”

Now Viola looked at him and her voice went from sickly helpful to sharp “Someone told me that tackle was my best option. You absolutely cannot health scare shame me in front of my own medical officer.”

She expected Karin to agree. 

She looked at Karin, who was studying her speculatively.

Fucking hell.

Karin said with her own deeply ground stubbornness “I don’t know, Shepard, he might. Why didn’t you report for an examination if there had in fact been hostile or incidental mental contact or change in biotics?”

Viola gestured at him “He…is…hostile contact. He can’t help it. Javik, did you suggest that I seek medical attention?”

Javik said smoothly “I did not.”

Viola made an emphatic nod.

Javik said “From what I understand of your personality that effort would have been futile.”

Karin made an emphatic nod.

Viola said, minimizing possible damage “I am not hallucinating. I see only one large, irritating, prone to complain Prothean in my field of vision. My biotics have undergone a makeover and contain a different color.”

Karin said with her head tilted “You should still be examined. I should check your implant and I should get a reference scan at least.”

Viola sighed.

Tactical backfire.

She could hear the metaphoric ricochet.

Javik said with his attention addressed to Karin “Commander Shepard is in no immediate danger and I believe there is no damage to her implant, though an examination would be of use. I am not a doctor, but I do believe I can help.”

Viola shot back “That hasn’t been proven to be true under any circumstances so far. I do not want you in my head. You caused the symptoms, being away from you will relieve the symptoms. I believe I can take advantage of that right now.” Viola stood to leave, but was restrained by Karin’s cool and light hand on the wrist holding the datapad.

Karin said in her inherently reasonable voice, which was irritating right now “Shepard. Please. I know you do not appreciate unsolicited medical advice, but please consider it from my side. You ignored first contact protocols. Whatever happened, you both agree there were hallucinations and alterations to biotics. These are neurological concerns, not a banged up knee.”

Viola gritted out “He only mentioned it to harass me.”

Karin shrugged and said “And it worked. He has passed the torch and I am now the agent of concerned harassment.”

Viola turned on Javik “I would love to shove you back into that pod for another 50,000 years.”

Javik said calmly “You would find that difficult to do without touching me.”

Viola scoffed “I can provide a diplomatic escort.”

Javik smiled “They would find it impossible.”

She refused to make the frustrated sound clawing its way out of her throat and she refused to hit him since it might solidify his allegation of mental health instability.

Fuck it. Maybe that was the perfect excuse. She was going to have to undergo examination anyway. Karin also knew this behavior was perfectly Shepardlike. Her jaw set and her hands flared blue and green.

Karin settled her immediate dilemma by indicating the path to the Med Bay. Viola went first, Javik followed.

Karin said to Javik acerbically “Can you help and not just needle her into a frenzy?”

Javik responded “Yes.”

Viola held still for the scan and did not murder anybody for a few moments, which was a feat of strength.

Karin asked briskly, businesslike “How?”

Javik explained “The implantation of Prothean beacon information primed Commander Shepard’s nervous system to be able to receive Prothean information. She has not had the capacity to access it, but she has received it and it rests in her memory. On Eden Prime she had access to further information from and about me specifically, priming her further to process Prothean information. When she physically attacked me, she touched me and I countered her attack with biotics. The combination of events has resulted in her receiving my template for biotic attack, in need of integration. Hallucination is not the right word for what she has experienced, it is not of human neurological origin but of hybrid Prothean and human origin. It is not a sign of deficit but of deepened capacity. She has the information, she does not know yet how to access it in a controlled manner. I can provide the ability to access, organize and utilize Prothean technology that is now an inherent part of her nervous system. If I am correct it will ultimately be of benefit and not a drawback.”

Viola said out of the side of her mouth “With having to touch you, it is a drawback.”

Karin ignored her, considering “I don’t have the capacity to monitor this. From my point of view this is entirely subjective. Shepard, what were the hallucinations like?”

Javik’s face made it clear if she was not honest, he would be, with likely embellishments of the traitorous variety.

Fuuuuuck.

Viola explained clinically “I began to feel disoriented before we woke him up, with the visions triggered on site, but the same thing happened to me with the original beacon. Once his biotics had activated, I lost control over my biotics. Not destructively, but enough that they would crawl on my skin. They now show green and blue. Seeing a Prothean face, feeling Prothean skin seemed to trigger further, more specific hallucinations. From my point of view, Karin, I’ve been through this. Years ago the beacon knocked me out entirely, this time I was in better shape, so I took the win. Javik did seem to help with nausea and disorientation, but I do not know what the hell he did when he was inside my head. For all I know if I’d just gotten away from him and taken a nap, it could have all been avoided. His presence is a trigger, he’s said so. He told me I needed him. I disagree. I believe if I get him the hell off my ship I will be fine, so that is my plan.”

Karin turned to Javik for confirmation, who nodded and stated for himself “I believe what has begun will not be reversed with my absence. Now she knows what a Prothean looks like, what a Prothean feels like, her future path will intersect with more Prothean technology, with more Reapers, which were also embedded in the Beacon. Any encounter could trigger fugue. She must learn to control it. I can help. I believe for the majority of humans, only a very few index images of the Prothean information would be available. With my assistance, I believe she can assimilate and use what others could not. She is a trove of information regarding my people, information I did not access in my lifetime. If she wants to find out of what use the Crucible is, there is a high likelihood that she could discover it within her own mind.”

Oh come on, that was obvious manipulative bullshit, dangling the one thing they needed from him, making him seem indispensible.

From the look on Karin’s face, she bought it.

Fuuuuuck.

Karin confirmed that the scan was clean to Shepard’s fuming response of “Yes, because my only problem is Javik. He’s just going to make it harder for me to do my job.”

Karin shook her head and said “Shepard. Be reasonable. Anecdotally you have a subjective issue that I cannot monitor or assist in alleviating. Under normal circumstances I would have to consider removing you from command. In Javik there is a solution. This is about saving the galaxy, Shepard, not your personal irritation with how that plays out. I’m going to authorize water tables and ear plugs and you are going to follow his advice or be benched for the Apocalypse.”

Shepard tried Commander voice “Doctor Chakwas, you have a clean scan and only anecdotal testimony. Right now I see only one Prothean and he is a smug asshole and you fell for it.”

Karin retorted “By your own anecdotal admission, his explanation of events and his ability to influence through touch provide an answer to the mutually acknowledged problem.”

Fuuuuuuck.

There was in fact only one Prothean, although she could feel a building headache, the tingling that might lead to bubbling, thought that was also consistent with rage.

Viola gathered a medical glove, put it on carefully, went to stand in front of Javik and said with ominous intent “This is my ship. This is my mission. Let’s clear up a few things. You’re new here, so I will explain. Karin Chakwas is a lovely lady who deserves better than your bullshit. You know perfectly well there is nothing about the Crucible in my head. I doubt that you as a Commander would take well to having your capacity to command questioned by a relative newcomer, oh so helpfully offering themselves as a babysitter. In fact I think you might have killed them.”

She lifted her hand and blue and green crackled, for once the implied menace worked for her. “This…is the only proof that what you are saying has even the slightest relationship to the truth, because it happened before you started rearranging my head. You have a choice here. You can choose to be under my command. You can let me hit you to test my biotics because you know you deserve it, because I know you deserve it. The lesson for you is that you will be aware I give unreasonable orders and I expect them to be followed every time. It will earn you Karin Chakwas’s sympathy. It will also let the good doctor know that you do not, in fact doubt my ability to command and that you and I in future will be able to manage our disagreements without her intervention. Good news, you’re already in the Med Bay.”

She met his eyes, cold demand in hers, impassivity in his as the main expression, but she thought that was for Karin’s benefit. She saw approval, understanding and appreciation of her direct approach. Another test she’d clearly passed.

She stepped slightly closer and said “You have choices. Right now you can ask to leave the Normandy and I will gratefully grant that request and send you off with all the transport and security you need, as long as you promise to not come back. You can disobey my command to stand still, evade my blow or hit back, and I will revoke your diplomatic status and hand you over to the Alliance as a zoo specimen of high value. I’m sure they have all sorts of hoops and needles that will keep you busy. If you stay, if you stand, we will have settled that my biotics function, my command is intact and you are willing to follow orders. We will have established that there are consequences for questioning my ability to command in order for you to prove your utility. Find another pathway to competence.”

Karin said tensely “Shepard…no…not in here.” Viola’s eyes narrowed and she considered once again that if she had a battle cry, it was ‘Shepard, no!’

Viola saw approval in Javik’s eyes. Once more she felt the depth of the odd sharing of comparable burdens, their dual ownership of the necessities of Command not appreciated by those who had never stood with the burden of that aura. Her fist surged with blue and green crackles and a newly appreciated promise of something new. The blow caught Javik, who stood perfectly still, under the jaw, lifted him off his feet. With respect for Karin’s domain, she aimed him away from expensive medical equipment to slide across the floor.

Viola said calmly as she took off the glove off and dropped it into the trash “Dr. Chakwas I thank you for the concern. Your bench will go unwarmed. You stipulated that you would have to consider the bench under normal circumstances. We have not been dealing with normal circumstances for a while now and extreme obstacles require extreme approaches with the inherent extreme costs. The Apocalypse takes precedence over your concerns, which you were manipulated into addressing. I am not incapacitated any more than usual, certainly not any more than I was after the Beacon. I recovered from those effects. I will recover from any effects of this encounter and continued association. I apologize for not consulting you. I should have if only as professional courtesy. If I have any further issues with Prothean technology, I am certain Javik and I can work them out with the same efficiency as we have shown here. On the bright side, I think my biotics are fine.”

Both Karin and Javik stayed still, Javik making no move to get up, his slow smile spreading despite or because of a growing Prothean purpling bruise and a laceration that dripped red onto the pristine Med Bay floor from his oddly segmented lips. Karin made no move to assist him until Viola was done.

Excellent outcome.

She cracked a smile as she left, feeling so much better at the sight of him sprawled, reassuringly a solitary Prothean, her headache fading before the rush of satisfaction and adrenaline.

Martin, that felt good.


	3. Chapter 3

Primarch Victus was an ass. The Turians had not just gotten their heads up their asses recently. It had been this way for centuries.

A huge fucking bomb on Tuchanka.

She was going to back up and say that again.

A Huge Fucking Bomb On Tuchanka.

That Cerberus was digging up.

She considered herself an exemplary human being for not punching Victus at the war table.

She was being guilted into taking Javik out for the party to rescue Tuchanka and prevent war with the Turians.

Liara had been insisting that Javik needed to go out on a mission.

Viola was not impressed “So he’s talking to you now?”

Liara was up to her tentacles in Shadow Broker business but she could not keep her oar out of the ongoing saga of the one living Prothean. Viola had managed to avoid him. She’d run the initial scouting rescue mission of the stranded Turians on Tuchanka with Vega and Garrus. Garrus’s presence was absolutely necessary so she could get the Turian perspective, and she thought it definitely motivated Turians to see him at her elbow. Out of everyone, she and Garrus were the most visible public faces of the fight against the Reapers.

Javik on the other hand…all she expected was to hear Javik spout off an opinion that would simultaneously infuriate her and the Turians. She listened to Liara say “Yes. He will talk to me now. I’m not saying he’s the most helpful person I’ve encountered, but I do think he feels he is going to waste on board the Normandy.”

Viola shook her head and said a skeptical “Does he now? Liara, he’s playing you.”

Liara said with as close to irritable as she got “Look, Shepard, I’m not stupid, I know that. But you did bring him on board to fight.”

Viola corrected “I brought him on board because you would have killed me for not bringing him on board. So take advantage of him being on board.”

Liara sighed and said “Shepard. Please. I need his cooperation and he has expressed that he feels underutilized.”

Viola said “In hopes that you would mention it to me.”

Liara paused but said “Yes, probably. Is it unreasonable that if you bring him on board, he is going to have the expectation of being part of a team?”

Viola imagined briefly the inevitable result of Javik, having failed with Karin and Liara, working his way down the crew list until everyone had checked in with her regarding how mean she was to the new helpful Prothean.

Manipulative asshole.

Shepard sighed and rubbed her eyes “I’ll take him out. I will make a determination as to his ability to be utilized in the field, but I need this to be the only time that you allow him to pressure you enough that you feel you must pressure me.”

Liara said thankfully “He’s a Prothean. A PROTHEAN. My whole life… Viola, you have no idea…yes, I know it is blackmail, I don’t care. The things he could tell me…us…for the price of a little indulgence. I think it’s worth being pressured. Both of us.”

Viola said carefully “Yeah, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one. Maybe I’ll get him blown up. Care to retract your request?”

Liara had a stubborn streak to her voice “No. And you’re not allowed to get him or you blown up. Just…take him out. I’ll stay benched for the duration. I give up my slot.”

Viola relented “All right. No explosions. That’s for the incendiary kind, not necessarily my temper. If I say so, you have to accept that I want him on board permanently, or even off the ship. Maybe you can both ride out the rest of the war writing research papers or something.”

Liara laughed with a sarcastic lilt and said “Yeah, that’s likely to happen. Awake for four seconds he knocked us all on our asses. He’s the Avatar of Vengeance for his people. He survived more intense war than all of us combined. I’m thinking he’s good with a gun.” Her voice changed to gratitude and she said “Thanks, Shepard.”

Viola cut off the conversation. As much as she had a personal problem with Javik’s attitude, Liara had a point. She did not have to like it. 

She wasn’t vindictive enough to get the only Prothean alive blown up so she was going to have to deal with being an adult about it. Karin had not made a peep about diminished capacity. Javik had not made himself a true nuisance, hadn’t forced a confrontation, though he was obviously angling for one through Liara.

He had been given ample opportunity and encouragement to leave. He had not taken hints or requests. Any questioning of his ability to fight was met with amusement. He went so far as to shore up his position on board by making sure others on the ship knew of his determination to remain and to fight.

The one time she really would have encouraged a mutiny…

She was going to have to put up and shut up. Hopefully he could do the same.

Her concern about Prothean bullshit in her head had faded some. She had nightmares, but not excessive and no more than usual. Sometimes now a bit more Prothean flavored, but also memories of Earth. Memories of Ashley. Memories of the many people she had failed, whose lives had ended as a result of her orders or inability to execute her orders.

As compelling and insistent as Protheans could be, she intellectually better understood the disorientation and warning and was not flooded with helplessness about understanding the messages. 

Truth was that now many of her nightmares were of Thane. His story was not buried but immediate. Her relationship to him was not accidental but chosen. Seeing him at Huerta had shown her just how diminished he considered himself to be, how close he was to death, and the sorrow and suffering that he bore in every cell. 

She was torn by her understanding of the man. 

He had spent so much time with her, given so much of himself. He had navigated his attraction to her and they came out on the other side friends. Once she had carefully declined any opportunity to pursue a more personal relationship, his interest in her had receded and all that had remained had been carefully calculated respect. All except for the word Siha, his one indulgence. He only said it to her in private, and she quietly was aware that the only other woman he had considered to be a Siha had been Irikah. 

Viola knew she had paradoxically failed him by not getting him killed during the Collector mission. That was what he had wanted, to die at the pinnacle of his chosen path, redeemed and obliterated, potential future pain denied its hold on him.

Thane, unlike…everyone she had ever met…refused to engage in argument with her.

He loved her. If she did not love him in return, so be it. He turned to her needs and not his, and never used an opportunity during combat to press his suit. 

He had stated his carefully worded and in hindsight wise counsel to not hand over the Normandy and go into custody, had accepted her refusal.

He did not blame her for his continued state of living but instead had dedicated himself to Kolyat, set an example of usefulness in decline, slowly choking to death and warning others, warning her, that she might not want to be around him. That was the most painful part. The warning. He had cautioned her carefully and quietly about his perceived uselessness and source of despair. He had used the same tone when describing how it was he chose to approach combat in the ring, all for her benefit.

All she saw was courage and dedication, the willingness to tolerate any pain if it provided some benefit to others. She avoided forcing him to admit to how much pain he was in.

She did love that man, but she was not in love with him.

Her nightmares took a few forms. She herself would choke from Kepral’s, watching her team die around her as she failed to be what everyone seemed to expect from Shepard. Sometimes Kolyat would take Thane’s place on a squad, that seeming entirely normal until she recognized the difference in color, the difference in ability, and that her inability to recognize him meant he died first, and then the other member of the squad, usually Garrus, and then she died. Sometimes she would dream of Thane speaking freely of what she knew he suffered, castigating her for taking him down further miles on the road of suffering when he could have, should have died in Dantius Towers.

All flavors of guilt, of his artfully subsumed motivations and reactions made flesh and voice.

No fraternizing was a rule she understood and followed. She had not been tempted to follow that path, but she had taken his friendship and companionship, his willingness to teach her his technique with gratitude.

She had also not been tempted with Kaidan, Liara, Garrus, Jacob or Vega. She felt the demands of being in command too sharply. She was focused on maintaining discipline. Those who found her to be attractive had been reliant on her judgment and clearheaded ability to fight. It was too much to ask for a person to manage the stresses of her command as well as the potential stresses of her bed.

It was in fact for their protection. She had not developed the skills required. She had followed the no fraternizing rule for a lifetime, and she respected the source of that edict.

She felt the vicious horrified slide of seeing Thane’s sense of himself, the gutting helplessness of being unable to reach him, and she was grateful for not discovering what he was like in more intimate moments. Sex would not change Kepral’s, would not change that she had betrayed him by taking him on board in the first place, by being so good at her job that he did not die.

The guilt was bad enough at this level of engagement. It would have been crippling if she had gone further.

It was too much to ask of herself or of another that she had that much power over their lives, that she was the cause of their death, that she could die as easily as she had the first time, no warning, minutes from whole to rent.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Tuchanka was shattered, ugly and Cerberus infested. 

Garrus had started a conversation with his comment about the bomb “Brutal. But it makes a certain kind of sense; put the Krogan down hard if they tried anything.”

That irritated the hell out of her and she disagreed after taking the jump down into chaotic explosions.

She aimed, reaved, blew out generators for barriers and said “Garrus, I think you are right about the brutal part, but it was fucking stupid terrorist act to place this bomb.”

Javik said calmly as he tore through Cerberus agents “I applaud Turian ruthlessness, but they did not go far enough. They should have detonated the bomb or used it as leverage.”

Garrus elaborated between shots calmly “We defeat the Krogan and then plant a bomb on their planet. Pretty extreme, but those were desperate times.”

She snorted and said “You’re both fucking wrong for so many reasons.” She timed her shots, taking one person down per shot with her breath and her ammo conserved. Between those shots she gave her reasons.

“Garrus, you said the Turians defeated the Krogan. Obviously not true if you then had to plant an extreme bomb. You should have actually…defeated the Krogan.”

“Turians were uplifted to oppose the Krogan. I’m guessing the bomb was a Salarian idea. It had also been their idea to uplift the Krogan. They set you both against each other to spare themselves.”

“Now it’s the Genophage itself, also a Salarian solution, that they used the Turians to initiate, that is the threat.”

“So from my point of view, Salarians put this fucking death trap in this hole, either forgot to arrange for security, which is incompetence, or kept faulty security in place to exploit, which I think is more Salarian in character. Turians let them do it.”

“Intent matters, but planning must be part and parcel of intent. The Hierarchy should have seen this exact scenario playing out, causing war between Turians and Krogan. They should have known that the Salarians could have detonated it at any point when a distraction was needed, and blamed your people…again.”

“Turian lives have been the greatest and most effective distraction Salarians have managed as a tool against the Krogan. Turians are too stubborn to admit they’ve been used and too loyal to stand in opposition to the Citadel and its status.”

“Tuchanka was a wasteland even when the bomb was planted. The Krogan were spread so far across the galaxy, at the time of the planting of this bomb, and now, that the only thing it EVER…would have accomplished…would be to make the remaining Krogan want to wipe out the Turian people.”

“So yeah. It was brutal, and it was desperate. But it was brutal because of the Salarians and it was desperate because Turians were manipulated into being loyal fodder. And that is why General Victus’s son is in there right now risking his life.”

“It’s also why I hate the Dalatrass with a passion.”

There was silence, and they traveled through the smoking wreck of the place. Garrus, ever ready to argue on behalf of his people’s superiority to humans, eventually said thoughtfully “I can’t argue with any of that. Damn. I would like to say though, that this is why this Turian turned against the Citadel and its status. Your ability to argue and shoot at the same time.”

Shepard laughed and took the win.

He was Turian and steadfast as his plates, too loyal to find fault in her analysis. Too honest to make up something stupid just to cover his pride. She said “I’m grateful for that decision every day.”

Garrus said thoughtfully “You said we were both fucking wrong, but you only pointed out my lapses in judgment. Where was Javik wrong?”

She shrugged “It’s folded in there. If the reasons and method of planting the bomb were wrong, then setting it off or attempting leverage, both of which would have resulted in infuriating and motivating Krogan to kill Turians, is also wrong. Inability to predict actual outcomes and who would potentially benefit from its placement and detonation, and the motivations.”

Javik said with a hint of amusement “Perhaps I meant that the Turians could leverage the information against the Salarians. Trigger war between Salarians and Krogan.”

She laughed “Nice try.”

Javik continued “But you agree that the Turians should have destroyed the Krogan entirely.”

She paused and said “I…don’t recall saying that.”

Javik repeated “You said the Turians should have defeated the Krogan.”

She shrugged and said “Open to interpretation I suppose, but let me qualify. They should have come up with a better solution than either open warfare or insecure in several ways puppet bomb. Maybe the Turian best move would have been to ally with the Krogan and wipe out the Salarians. Maybe they should have arranged for trade and mutually beneficial projects. I think they lacked foresight and originality. They should have seen that their real foe was the Salarians.”

Javik said after casually tearing apart a flank of arriving Cerberus. Damned well impressive, his biotics and gun admittedly not only passing any level of competence she could arrange, but delving into brutal poetry, rather like Thane. “A year ago, Commander, you worked side by side with the people we are now opposing. Do you plan to defeat them?”

Her teeth gritted and she said “I do.”

Javik said with some of the savage of the fight investing his voice “You consider the Salarians untrustworthy, but you work closely with one. An act with a high risk of betrayal or discovery. You agree to allow this Salarian to attempt to reverse the Genophage, something you do not even know if you can do, an act of potential ignorance born of desperation. You murder the brothers and sisters in arms you worked with a short time ago. A personal act of betrayal.”

She grinned and said “Brutal and desperate times.”

Garrus responded “Got that right.”

Javik said with some condemnation “The Turian is loyal, something you just pointed out, something he loyally agrees with, as you reduce the history of his people to puppetry.”

Garrus concentrated on a shot and then sounded like he was shrugging “I just heard about the bomb, so did she, we’re still catching up. She’s persuasive.”

Javik sounded amused “On that we agree. Shepard, why do you not persuasively end the lives of those who oppose you or at the least not coddle them? Why would you allow Turians to insist that you arrange for Krogan to defend them? If you can arrange that, why would you not demand Krogan warriors defend Earth now and allow Turians to be the fodder you historically assign them as a role?”

She sighed “That’s a good question. Answer is…I don’t have the force, I only have limited and potential leverage. Right now potential and imaginary leverage. I can’t defend Earth with only the Krogan army, or with all Turians indoctrinated and sent back out against us. My trust in Mordin is earned. My mistrust of Cerberus is earned. So rather than judge by race of origin it seems I attempt to discern true motive. Not saying I’m always right, but I try.”

Javik stated flatly “Had you the force, what would you do?”

She stated clearly for the record “Had I the force, Reapers would not make it through any of the relays.”

Javik asked “Once you defeated the Reapers, would you then wipe out other civilizations, making humans the leading life forms to rule what would be a cycle with no end?”

Garrus laughed, bless him.

She said with conviction “No. I have friends, Javik. Friends that annoy me, friends that argue with me, but friends who are passionate about their people and this fight.”

Javik sounded disgusted with that level of maudlin lack of sense. “So you would deny your people the right to rule unopposed?”

She said with humor “Obviously I’m not all that fond of Salarians and yeah, maybe I’d take a bite out of Sur’kesh…”

Garrus laughed again.

Then she sobered “But no. I am a fan of diversity. I wouldn’t listen to a Salarian when they suggest I bury a big bomb for them, but that does not mean I want them dead.”

Javik countered “But you want Cerberus dead. Humans. Humans who gave you your life and your ship back.”

She considered and said “They are that, and yes, I’ll kill every one of them that shoots a gun at me. I’d try to save them if they wanted to be saved, though.”

Javik scoffed “You lack focus.”

She shrugged “I have a wide lens. Working and fighting at the side of an exceptional Turian…”

Garrus said “I hope you mean me and not Victus.”

She said as an aside “I mean you.”

Garrus said “Oh thank the Spirits.”

She continued “An exceptional Asari, an exceptional Drell, an exceptional Salarian, an exceptional Quarian…I’ve discovered I can in fact allow for a great deal of exceptions and that I must allow the best a species has to offer to stand in proxy for their people, that they are worth fighting beside.”

Garrus said “Shepard. Please. He’s got to at least be an exceptional Prothean.”

She said “No, he’s exactly the average of all the Protheans I’ve met.”

Garrus hissed a breath “Mathematical burn.”

Javik had no answer other than further impressive obliteration of Cerberus forces, and she decided…he was of real benefit to any ground team she might lead. 

Not that she was going to tell him that.

Javik proved himself over and over, Garrus’s expression one of approval and appreciation. They had to take a stand in a terrible spot for visibility, with Tarquin on unavoidable high ground, shuttles incoming nonstop, her fearing that he could be flanked. They stayed on the middle ground to low ground and had mechs thrown at them.

She had next to no cover, and what meager cover there was, Javik used to the best of his ability, taking down the mech essentially alone while she covered Tarquin.

She had a helpless view of watching Tarquin sacrifice his life for the sins and failings of his fathers, for his own sins and failings, her callous and smug words of Turians being fodder echoing in anger and helplessness and pain through her mind. Garrus was stalwart and loyal, Javik was impassive with human blood drying on his armor.

The necessities of command channeled her personal grief into the necessary shape. Regardless of the futility of the fight, Tarquin deserved her dry eyed respect and regard. Turians did not cry. She did not cry. Her last tears had been before she’d watched her parents slaughtered on Mindoir. It had struck her then that tears would draw attention, make it about her, and she needed to be quiet. She had stared, dry eyed, and not made the moment about her. Future moments that involved the misfortune and losses of other people had reinforced that impulse. Ultimately when she had caused, or failed to prevent death of someone under her command, like now, the possibility of tears no longer occurred to her body. 

This was not about her. Reapers were not about her. By all accounts tears made people feel better. She vaguely remembered them from when she was a child, crying over lost privileges or perceived slights. She felt better in other ways, mostly by feeling like hell appropriately and not making it about her.

She took it personally, but she did not cry.

Victus was stoic.

Garrus was waiting for her when she finished speaking to the Primarch. Garrus held out his hand for her gun and she gratefully handed it over. His willingness to get on with life as they chose to live it helped her find her way to the shuttle bay. To her startled surprise, Javik was already there. It was a small space and since she was accustomed to privacy she stood still a moment, as though her sanctuary had been invaded. Then she remembered Javik had helped keep her alive in exemplary fashion and her resentment sank. He was still in some armor, but stripped to the waist, with his chest piece set aside neatly. He was using the heavy bag. She realized she could have a heavy bag put into her quarters, and decided he could have the space. In the few moments it had taken for her to make these decisions he had noticed her. She gave him an awkward smile, intending not to interrupt him, and moved to leave.

He interrupted that impulse, saying politely “Commander.”

That word again. She said a Commanderey thing to say “Your work out there was extraordinary. I’m lucky and grateful to have you on my team.”

He bent his head forward in an acknowledgment of acceptance. She had been testing her own head against his presence throughout the day…and she’d had no fugue. Now she tested her head against his presence and was surprised to discover that yes, no fugue, but also awareness of textured blue skin with the accents of red in the creases and bulges of his body. And there were a lot of creases and bulges.

She went straight back to invasion of sanctuary and retreat.

This is definitely the time to not take things personally, Viola. 

Don’t take his smile personally.

Don’t take his stance personally.

Walking away quickly and heading to her quarters and into a shower, she realized something that had seemed odd. He was in front of the heavy bag but she had not heard punching when she had approached, only silence. His hand was spread over the surface of the bag, and his odd gesture might have revealed that even though she wiped the bag down, it was likely saturated with her blood and sweat…

Okay. She should wrap her hands.

She was finally convinced.

In the overly hot shower she tilted her head against the cool tile and reminded herself to not take any of it personally, that temptation was not wise nor encouraged, and she had enough problems.

That springing of her imagination into wondering what his skin felt like fully warmed now was not a product of the beacon, but it would likely be just as stubborn and impossible to get out of her head.

Even worse, part of her mind believed it knew exactly what he would feel like and could not stop suggesting it as a way to pass time.


	4. Chapter 4

She sat at breakfast, coffee, toast and data pad. Quiet morning.

Javik’s deep voice sounded at her shoulder “Commander.”

With her turned away from him, without recognizing him immediately, her head categorized his voice as nice. Affecting. Deep. Familiar and comforting. She rejected that once she was able to think about it and not feel about it.

No. It’s annoying. I insist.

She turned to him and Javik offered her a plate. “I prepared my breakfast, I made extra in the hope you might enjoy it.”

Somewhat shocked that this was a nice voice and a handmade breakfast moment and not a ‘want to punch a Prothean moment’ she tilted her head and said “Thank you…I…what is that?”

He had a hint of a smile on his lips and in his voice “Nobody you know.”

She laughed and leaned toward him, said “Javik…I have been wondering…it just doesn’t seem feasible that you specifically would have eaten a Turian. They’re…dextro. Not only are they likely tough and stringy, but just the fuel costs…and with travel restricted by the time you were born…”

Javik leaned in and said confidentially “Commander. On that subject I claim diplomatic immunity.”

Her lips twitched and she took the plate and repeated “What is this?” Whatever it was, it smelled like savory ambrosia.

He said “I have found a few acceptable materials to work with.”

She tilted her head and repeated “What…is…it?” with a laugh.

He pointed them out reassuringly “There are more Asari provisions on the ship than others, so that is a cut of wheri and the tuber is called yeres, the vegetation harapet.”

She smelled again and said “I forgot that immediately. This is…” She steadied the plate in one hand and took a bite of the hash and her eyes rolled back in her head. “That is…there are no words.” She asked him “Are you done eating?” He gestured to his half finished plate and she said “Grab it. This needs to be savored. Observation deck.” She walked with him until he picked up his plate, then they headed that way, opened the port and she sat down, took in a deep breath and smiled at him. She took another bite and her eyes rolled back and her lids fluttered. When her eyes opened he was watching her with intent amusement and some pride.

She said gratefully “This is the best thing I have ever eaten.”

It was. And that was an understatement of how much better it was than anything else she had ever eaten.

He nodded in acknowledgment and they ate in companionable silence looking out the port observation view. Today they would head back down to Tuchanka, visible through the port, with Mordin’s assurances that he would be able to formulate and dispense a cure to the Genophage. The risks and costs of what they were doing were temporarily suspended with shared appreciation of a clear and unambiguous reason to enjoy living.

She had never really been big on food, mostly ambivalent, but this helped her understand why some people could be obsessed with the subject. This was addiction worthy.

She ate slowly, watching the planet that looked so serene from here, knowing it was a wasteland, that the storms and winds that looked like whimsical swirls of cloud from here were deadly, that they still needed to save her, from herself, from the Reapers. She was beautiful from here, and she would get uglier as they descended.

She allowed her respect for the food to stand alone, and her portion was gone quickly in comparison to his. He seemed to savor the view, the food, the silence. Even when he was finished it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but she had grown curious and the offering of food gave her the opportunity to ask “So…I’m curious. When you chopped the…tuber…the…what was it called?”

He provided “Yeres.”

She said “Right. So when you chop…yeres…do you get insight into the life of a tuber? Did it think tuber thoughts, have tuber feelings?”

He took a moment to think, the absurdity of her question apparent. He could easily deflect that question, but he chose to indulge her curiosity. “Not thoughts, no, but simple creatures and even plants have imperatives, and they are clean, absolute things without thoughts. The blind need for something not understood but sought mechanically. The turning toward light of one part and the digging in soil for the other part. The leaves have different purposes than roots, so touching a leaf is different from touching a root, and also different from the stem or fruit. The tuber itself does not seek, but is fed by the rest of the plant.”

She smiled “So…tubers are lazy and smug?”

He smiled briefly “In comparison to other things. The nature of inanimate things is much more of a background experience, the way you would perceive cold upon touching metal. Prothean children explore and learn these things; they do not intrude upon consciousness by adulthood. Much of childhood is spent learning to categorize memory and sensation, much of it becomes automatic, many adult Protheans were insensitive to much of the input or chose to wear gloves.”

She asked “So your perception is just in your hands? You can’t…breathe people in? I imagine that would be very distracting.”

Javik said “Solely in the hands. That is distracting enough.”

She said helpfully “Not as distracting as being shot at?”

He answered “That is not distracting, that is focusing.”

She asked “And the meat…did you get thoughts from handling meat?”

He shook his head “Not any longer. There are focusing techniques that I use under normal circumstances. Just as you perhaps can learn something well enough to block out some of the input that is average to your experience. Animal experience, plant experience, stone and metal existence, fabric and leather, they can be alike enough to stir no new thoughts. Though there are many religious interpretations throughout Prothean history who revered certain perceptions or all perceptions, or none as superior.”

She felt her curiosity expand and so she set her plate carefully down and got comfortable, said “Tell me about them.”

He set his plate down, she had shifted to a 45 degree angle to look at him, and he did the same. He told her “The Veranch sect believed Protheans to be Gods blessed, and considered all other creatures without our ability to be inferior. They gave rise to the doctrine of conquest. That being established and successful, another sect rose; the Rechenkal. They believed that Protheans had been driven to warlike conquering by the sin absorbed through our hands. They had their hands ritually amputated and replaced with mechanical hands. They were in fact mostly pitied. Many did not live long past the amputation. Many suicides. Regret and recanting of the act, descriptions of the experience of loss of connection to the world around them. Considered to be failures of character by the Rechenkal who survived, who became zealots, but zealotry is in fact very much in Prothean tradition so it did not stand out. There were always a few Rechenkal to protest, and the leaders of our people kept them about as an illustration of how little their protest accomplished. The Veranch used the presence of the Rechenkal as proof that they tolerated dissent. They did not tolerate dissent, but they did tolerate opponents that mutilated and isolated themselves, opponents that sounded to most Protheans to be insane and dedicated to ignorance. Their failure of philosophy convinced most Protheans that they were in fact blessed by Gods and the Veranch were powerful in terms of political and military influence. Ultimately real protest would occasionally be punishable by being made forcibly Rechenkal and exiled without transportation to the planets of the lower creatures they mistakenly revered as superior. There were many mystical societies that favored one sensation over others. Those that believed contemplation with different crystals or metals to be calming to the mind. Those that raised their children to only touch certain things to not be sullied.”

She smiled wryly “If I know much about living creatures, they do love their sullying.”

He nodded “The power of Prothean experience is profound, and the diversity that you champion is confusing, even dangerous, to have all things open to interpretation and not adjudicated by perception. For us, to touch a flower is to know something about the state of a flower, but it does not change the inherent state of being Prothean. It seems that with other species, to touch a flower could mean anything at all, from mystical to mundane. Language describes experience, and the stronger language gathers the most attention. The experience and reality can be lost to the power of persuasive rhetoric. Reality can be bent to serve selfishness, to serve weakness. To me most creatures do appear blind…and loud…ignorant of the things a Prothean child would know with such certainty that it drew no attention or thought. That is not to say my people did not experience folly and arrogance. Rich Protheans would often accumulate sensation libraries, often also zoos. Their lives lost to accumulation of sensation. Conspicuous uselessness and idleness. Before the war, much of what I was able to learn was that my people had the time and power to be foolish and greedy.”

She said with more sympathy than bitterness “That is my current experience of the galaxy.” Her eyes drifted to Tuchanka. To change the subject back to personal curiosity she said “So how did you learn to cook?”

He said “It was not standard training. One of the times I was injured early in my career we were the last few survivors on an outpost. Most buildings were decimated, but one hospital was still functioning, intact. It had been installed underground and the Reapers had not located it. There were the remnants of a reference library. Much of the technical or practical data had been evacuated, but left behind was an entire series on Prothean cuisine, technique, food sources. It is true that Turian was not one of them. I enjoyed learning the theory. Once I had healed, I spent time learning the practical aspects. I became accustomed to good food. No one else seemed to have the interest or capacity for training, but I enjoyed it.”

She asked “Did you cook for your crew?”

He nodded and said “Yes.”

She said with humor “Thank you for this. I can’t imagine…what if it had tasted terrible?”

His smile was assured “That would not be possible.” He looked at her, and said “I know how it would taste to you.”

Her brows drew together “How?”

His eyes drifted closed, then opened. He said “I spoke of templates. What tastes good to you is unique to you, but stable information. Part of your nervous system, your sensory preferences. I was entirely unshielded, unprepared when you first touched me, unable to filter or sort what information I received. Just as you absorbed my template for biotics and likely more, I absorbed much about you.”

She said in part fascination and part panic “So…you can…take my nervous system out for a joyride? Put on my tastes like a what…a human suit?”

He nodded, ignored her escalating panic and said helpfully “I must thank you. I would be unable to navigate current cooking techniques otherwise, but given some research and your perception of taste, I find it easier to focus. If I tried to make something to my taste, I doubt I would be able to navigate the ingredients or technique at all and you would not enjoy it. If I tune it to your taste, it is something we both could enjoy.”

She had a visceral reaction to the idea that he was…wearing her taste buds like flipping a switch…that he made a meal with her senses, sat next to her eating with her preferences on his own tongue, the scent of the food still on her palate and from her plate. His eyes met hers contemplatively, calmly while her sense of personal disorientation of a...template…being pulled out and her unique circumstances reduced to an x-ray under certain types of light. Transparent. Simple.

He wasn’t looking at her as though this were simple, though. He granted her the grace of complexity. 

He had offered her breakfast as proof of concept. He could have lied to her about how he could make something that appealed to her with such certainty, maintained an aura of a chef who had sampled the flesh of every species. Instead he granted her the unflinching truth and he utilized it to his advantage. He offered her something elegant in composition and presentation, to allow for introduction of a bizarre truth. 

She imagined if she had not asked, he would not have told her. But she did ask.

She failed to absorb this truth in any sane way, once again feeling that dizzying blur of what was beneath the surface in her own mind, his stories of Prothean history threatening to bubble over, what he had said he knew about her, what she did not know about him. He was a creature of inevitabilities and she had been a creature of possibilities until right now.

He knew he had to be careful with her, and he was introducing truth in small bite sized hashes, easy to swallow if not digest once the recipe became clear. He was sparing her the overwhelming experience that first seeing him had triggered and he was in fact trying to help.

Now she was a known quantity.

Known, superimposed and reduced to the components of a hash.

A…delicious…hash…part of her mind protested.

Oh, shut the fuck up. Poisoned hash.

Delicious poisoned hash.

He was a hunter, and this was bait.

Delicious…poisoned…bait.

With the instinct of understanding hunting behavior she did not wish to be flushed from cover, and she did not need to protest what was truly…not his fault. It was not his fault that he was frozen for 50,000 years and woke to a tackle from a foreign mind. 

Whatever…this was…did not matter. What mattered is that he would kill and fight and she would provide the opportunity.

And if he offers you another plate of tailored ambrosia, you will eat it because you’re not rude and you’re not childish (ultimately) and he knows that.

He knows you. Wherever you go, whatever you do, he will know the difference between camouflage and truth.

He watched her with unending patience, so she tried to grant the same. She said “That was delicious, and I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. Thank you for answering my questions as well, that was personal curiosity and not official.”

He inclined his head and said “That was a personal plate of food and not official. My answers were personal as well.”

Some part of her was screaming to run, and another part screaming to ask more questions, get more answers. She put a temporary lid on all of it because more Prothean revelations could genuinely cause a breakdown. She saw only him as she looked at him. He did, however, seem to contain more information than what seemed possible. He looked at her calmly with the air of someone accustomed to accepting impossibility as soon as he touched it. Or her.

She had told him in angry terms, but she would tell him again, in calm terms, and let everything sink in with both of them. He was tempting her and she would not be tempted.

She said quietly “I appreciate the effort, and I’m flattered, but I will say again that I can’t, won’t be interested in any relationship other than friendship. I admire your skill and your ability to fight, you are formidable and I’m lucky to have you, and I know it. That’s as far as I can go. I’m sorry.”

His smile reminded her that he had canines like a vampire. He stood, picked up his plate, stepped over the side of the couch, picked up hers. His voice was poised carefully between assurance and comfort, and bore that ring of inevitability she was resisting “Viola. There is so much further you can go. Your reasons for not being involved with your crew do not apply to me. I tell you again that you need me. I will add that I need you. You think it is a choice. Do not blame yourself as you believe your resolve fails. It is not a failure. You fear that you will harm your crew through abuse of power. There is nothing about abuse or use of power that you can teach me that I do not already know. You cannot do harm to me that has not already been done.”

Her heart was hammering and she felt the strained conflicting urges of wanting to lean to him, wanting to scramble backward out of his reach and wanting to maintain calm. She said “It’s not a rule I have broken, Javik. If you are under my command, there is nothing more to say. You would have to leave the Normandy.” She was hoping he would take that bait. Please leave. Let me give you hope and then please leave.

She wanted to order him off the ship but she had no grounds other than personal. She knew how much he could in fact contribute to her mission and she was fast approaching if not past not being able to let him go for purely professional reasons, much less personal ones.

He leaned down and with some pride she did not shrink away, followed by regretting that she hadn’t as his hand drifted a caress over the side of her throat. The texture of his skin was warm, shivers radiating out along her nerves from the brief contact.

Immediately her spine felt like it was glowing and her hands flared in a purely green aura, involuntary.

He didn’t need anything more from her head, he already had it. It wasn’t the same touch that had resulted in rearranging her memories. That had taken a different type of focus, concentration. This was a touch to drench pleasure along her skin, as though he’d taken her nervous system out for a joy ride and knew exactly what would feel good, sound good, sound reasonable, sound inevitable.

She didn’t need to fear him touching her because there was in fact no need for him to hurt her or take anything from her that he did not already have. Betrayal from him was impossible, among all her crew. He had no allegiance or ties to any existing state or person other than her. That is what she heard, what she felt as he said “Viola, I am not under your command. I agree to your command, but you know the difference. You told me what I am. You told everyone what I am. I am a diplomat. You put me beyond Alliance law, beyond your law. Consider the possibilities.”

His warmth withdrew from her neck, his breath from her ear, footsteps receded, door opened and closed and the relief of him leaving resulted in her closing her eyes and slumping, breathing hard as her mind and body raced.

Green slowly faded from her spine and her hands. She felt like an adolescent male who had unfortunate and easily read physiological signals of arousal that led to helplessness. And she used to think hard nipples were embarrassing. 

I hate that everything he said sounds absolutely reasonable.

I hate that I have to restrain myself from considering possibilities because that has never been a problem.

I really hate that all he has to do is run a finger over my throat and it proves his point whether or not I approve. He…is in my spine and my hands and he can wear me like a tea cozy.

Oh, bad phrasing. Stop. I demand you stop generating tea cozy images. BAD PHRASING.

Biotics flared again for a moment and green glowing tea cozy drapey things occurred to her and she really wished she had paid more attention to Thane and had some skill at meditation. This was not something she could shoot, or something she could argue with.

She was so bad at this slow down, calm down thing.

She’d had a feast or famine sex life customary in the military. Shore leave was spent in anonymous and athletic sex. Fun. Clean. After dying that had stopped. All worlds coming to an end had made anonymity impossible, and it seemed everyone had turned into a potential victim. Her eyes were no longer speculative but pitying, she only saw people she had to save. 

Javik had already experienced all the devastating losses in his past that she was attempting to forestall in her future. He had failed to save his own people, and that would never be eclipsed by anything she did. It would be an insult to him to think otherwise, delusional and arrogant for her to think she had any power over him other than what he had granted voluntarily and could withdraw on a whim. The only thing he wanted was vengeance and he was not deluded about that. He would get it whether or not she provided it. Whatever her choices, his were set, had been set 50,000 years ago. She was, in many ways, irrelevant except that by some bizarre chance, his nervous system had meshed with hers and they happened to agree that Reapers were worthy of their attention.

She knew she was one of the only people who took the no fraternizing regulation seriously. Most people flaunted it openly or secretly, and she never punished anybody for it. She’d been a part of elite crews since her N7 training who were more than able to keep their shit together and it didn’t come up. More power to them if they could manage. Most people could. When she was of lower rank she hadn’t wanted to risk her chance of getting to a higher rank, and now that she was a higher rank she felt the responsibility of power. She had a more parental relationship to her crew than peer to peer. Garrus, though he was the Normandy Dad, was still in her care. She still knew him for his vulnerabilities, and felt that her dying once had screwed him over enough. She did not want to screw him over further.

She’d seen every member of her crew in vulnerable moments, and though they were attractive people, they all were deeply wounded already and she felt that it was her job to protect their weak spots, not dive into them and swim around.

She had a longstanding habit of revulsion for the idea simply because she held so much power over them and it was an abuse of power that she could not abide.

An IF/THEN relationship.

IF I can tell you to die.

THEN I cannot tell you to strip.

Simple, reasonable math. She held a lot of power, it tended to subvert and twist people, and she would not exert that pressure above and beyond the unreasonable things she already asked people to do on a regular basis.

Javik was right and he did not have the vulnerabilities of every other person on this ship. He had seen more war than she had, and he had no expectations other than that he would die. All he asked was the opportunity to kill. ‘Getting to know her’ would not be a trauma. It was done.

Therefore telling him to strip was irrelevant vis a vis dying. 

Do not consider the possibilities.

There are REAPERS out there. Open your eyes.

She didn’t. She didn’t look down on Tuchanka and force herself to face reality.

This was reality, fait accompli, to hear him tell it, to see her body react. A heart pounding, breath stealing combination of his competence setting a mark beyond hers, his lack of illusions and fingertips that could…face it, you’re not ordering him to strip. You’re melting into a little puddle and your clothes are falling off. 

She heard a weak, ironic and exhausted voice in her head say ‘Shepard, no.’

Well, look on the bright side. Tuchanka might just kill her. She’d better make sure that didn’t happen though, so stop considering possibilities right now.

oOoOoOoOoOo

Tuchanka did not kill her, but did kill Mordin.

She was dry eyed again, appropriately grieving. She knew Mordin did it voluntarily, just like Tarquin had. Doing their best against the sins of the fathers or the self.

Bakara was alive. Wrex was effusively arrogant, but respectful of Mordin’s sacrifice.

Mordin’s sacrifice was as noble as could be made, with an admittedly good reason for making it. It made a difference that it was chosen.

She was still going to miss him, mourn him, personally.

Mordin was made of tough and smart and she would try to do the same in his honor.

When a colleague died she tried to honor what they honored, a service of mindfulness. Sometimes she hadn’t gotten to know a person well enough to know what they honored, and that drove her to get to know every person under her command. Mordin she had known well, dazzled by his genius, and although he seemed to make other people impatient with his speed, she had found him comforting in his focus. He had given every second of his short life to what he believed in. He was an inspiration and his death had not been senseless, had been measured and considered and would have consequences that transformed the galaxy.

She hoped for the same for herself, her first death having been about as heroic as tripping on a sidewalk and cracking her head open.

He’d betrayed his people and his Dalatrass and she loved him for it.

Now they were headed back to the Citadel. Onto the next concern. Intrigue with a Councilor that could not be discussed on even encrypted channels.

She had gone straight to her quarters, not to her retreat in the shuttle bay. She wasn’t angry, her usual state. She didn’t have the normal energy to bleed off; it had been an exhausting mission, sprinting and dodging Reaper feet and brutes. Garrus had recommended she go get some sleep and he’d never done that. A glance at herself in the mirror revealed eyes that did not appear as though they had seen sleep.

She still could not go straight to sleep, fell to restless pacing.

An alert at her door got her a flare of familiar, almost comforting annoyance against the bleak backdrop of grief.

She did have an open door policy and it was not unheard of for someone to seek out Commander Shepard in her quarters. She answered neutrally “Come.”

Javik entered and her sense of personal space eroded. Some sanctuary bubble around her popped and left no evidence of it having existed at all. 

He stepped in, put a plate down for her at the small table, a plate for him, and a bottle of alcohol between the two plates.

She was, in fact, suddenly aware of fierce hunger and she realized she had not eaten anything since he had made her breakfast.

Part of her wanted to break the plate, break the fish tank, rupture the hull with biotics…throw some level of cathartic tantrum…but she was tired and hungry and small and he sat there with possession and with all the air of belonging there.

She couldn’t even argue.

She did not want to argue.

She needed to eat and his presence would keep her steady. He had been indispensable on Tuchanka. There had been a moment underground where falling rubble would have killed or maimed her, and it was Javik that had shoved her aside, taken the glancing remaining fall on his shoulder, making no comment. Reaching the thresher maw hammers was made possible by his willingness to distract three brutes at a time without hesitation. What she felt most right now was gratitude for being alive, having food and a companion that she did not need to explain herself to.

So she didn’t try. She grabbed two shot glasses and filled them both, downed one and started to eat. She had no idea what the alcohol was, maybe Elasa? Asari label. They did not speak. The food was, again, not something that seemed possible from the ship stores she knew.

Just a mystery amid mysteries and a soul restoring miracle.

Thoughts shifted from Mordin being dead to her being alive.

She did not want another shot because it would remove the taste of customized template.

He took longer to eat than she did and did not touch the alcohol.

She could not summon resistance or mistrust of him when he moved slowly, giving her time and room to protest, and lifted her in his arms. He was warm, sure, and she not only had no mistrust, she had trust. Tentative and fragile, but trust.

He moved slowly again, sat back where he had been, arranged her body on his lap and her head on his shoulder. His arm around her back, his hand along the side of her throat. He was warm and alive, a simple basic truth that transcended the past and promised a future. She could not see far into the future, but was grateful to him for now. The familiar surge of involuntary green biotics danced over her skin at the touch of his hand. The arm around her back reached a hand out to hers, and when he touched that hand to grasp it, it seemed to make a circuit, her biotics no longer leaping but circulating through his body as well, a more subsumed hum that resulted in warmth, pleasure, grounding.

It was not peace or comfort of a meadow, like the fabled, unreachable ‘happy place’ other people seemed to have. Those places, those ideas were too foreign to her, and she could never relate to them, fantasies. It always agitated her to consider them, as though she were willfully blinding herself to reality.

This was a different peace.

This was the peace of having fought with her back to the wall, her only weapon a glass shard that cut into her palm. The peace of discovering her back was no longer to a wall, but to his back. The peace of his taking the shard of glass from her hand and wrapping the base in leather, a promise that the fight would resume tomorrow, but would not cut as deep, the fight would not be against self inflicted pain born of desperation. The peace of him taking this watch.

This was a peace that could fit in with how she saw the world. She’d had no idea how much she needed that, and it had an element of surreal fantasy and the acceptance of a dream state.

He would watch over her. His touch and her trust allowed that, and exhaustion overcame her. The inevitability of his hands on her skin, his warm presence without words. She couldn’t tell if the peace she felt was an act of will from him through his hands…

His hands were warm, without the tingles of earlier pleasure, humming with energy but not crackling. Solid and reassuring, protective. 

It didn’t matter, did it? The act of will to tell her things would go a certain way, and then to make that way inevitable came from a strategic hunter who had learned quickly to outmaneuver her, and she was grateful for it whatever the source.

It just might turn out that her frustration with people in general attempting to manage her wasn’t the problem, the problem was being managed badly.

His actions demanded the basics be fulfilled, and sleep was in order, an order. He did not need to ask, he provided for the state and it would follow.

Her actions were the posture of acceptance and thanks. She did not need to say it, compliance was assured and agreed and in accord.

She had no nightmares, aware in her green dreams of the shape of a Prothean body, of the warmth of Prothean hands, and the sheltering vigilance of four golden eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

When she woke up she had been placed carefully on her bed. She was a light sleeper, amazed she hadn’t woken up.

He brought her breakfast, more miracles, did not speak, and left.

Possibly the perfect not roommate.

More than slightly dazed but better prepared to handle grief, she began to dig through reports of her next mission, politics on the Citadel, which made her infuriated in general and specifically. She had been allowed to bring weapons onto the Citadel. She should have shot Udina and done the worlds some good. 

She should have tracked down The Illusive Man instead of spending six useless months under house arrest.

Javik brought her lunch and then left her alone.

Javik brought her dinner and then left her alone.

Arrogant son of a bitch, she missed him. She turned her hands over to test an idle rush of green. She was getting the hang of how green felt different from blue, better able to control it.

And now she was addicted to Prothean cooking.

Fucking perfect.

Thanks Martin.

oOoOoOoOoOo

By the time they got to dock at the Citadel she was tense, anticipating a shit show and not surprised at all to be getting one.

She brought Vega and Garrus, both of whom had more skin in this game, knew the Citadel well and would be more likely to know any Alliance or C-Sec they met.

By the time Thane was gasping for a breath, run through, she was livid, barely able to feel her weapon on her hand.

She had wanted to tell him to get to safety, but knew she had no right to give him orders. She wanted to chew him out right now like a raw recruit who lifted his head during a live ammo exercise.

He’d had his shot. He’d had his gun to the agent’s head and the whine of the charge had alerted him. Why didn’t he just snap his neck? 

But she knew he wanted to die.

Do not speak ill of the dead.

To avoid any recriminations, she stared at Thane as his blood pooled, the green streak on the wall behind him, blood on his lips and a cough that reflected a now collapsed, useless lung.

Damn you, Krios, for forcing me to allow you to make yourself useless.

Her jaw was set and angry as she remembered the agent saying “No, now it’s fun.”

Fun.

Some dark part of her was provoked, not because he wanted to provoke her, but because she so very much wanted to have fun killing him now. Violence came too easily, anger too readily, and some echo inside her that would want it to be solemn and vengeful anticipated the curve of her lips as he died, and how much that would be felt in her spine and not reach her eyes.

He was right. By the time she got to killing him, it would be fun.

She had in fact had fun before, every time her mission took her to detain slavers. Every Batarian slaver she had ever faced had died. It was her job, and she filed the reports with solemnity, but the fizz of taking it personally danced along her spine each time she saw one fall.

She hadn’t managed to truly hate Cerberus as much as she hated Batarian slavers, until right now.

She kept hitting a hard core of cold where she could not empathize with Thane, and then she realized that was the essence of empathizing with Thane.

She almost shot Kaidan out of sheer boiling hatred…and the searing gall of him standing between her and Udina. 

She almost…ALMOST let Garrus shoot him for that, but didn’t. Instead, Shepard waved Garrus away and somehow managed to not tear Kaidan a new orifice. Brand spanking new Spectre and you’re the Guardian of the Ignorant and the Malicious.

Fuck. You. Alenko.

At least Shepard got to shoot Udina.

Dry eyed at the door to Thane’s hospital room she lifted all her anger and wrath off her shoulders before she stepped in, a mantle she promised herself would reform without her trying to pick it back up. 

Smiles were not like her, and neither were blank faces, so she gave him the expression of gratitude she had always felt in his presence. Grateful he had not died at Dantius. Grateful he had offered her his love, his life, his training, freely.

It was a moment for them both to love but to not be in love. A moment for her to honor his life, because she’d have all the time forward to honor his death without him. Her hatred, her condemnation, her…fun…would not touch him. Not now. Not ever.

She stepped to the side opposite Kolyat, brushed a hand over Thane’s brow and said nothing. There was a great deal to see in his eyes, things unspoken before his son. He was grateful to die, she was grateful to be at his side as he did it. His pain would end.

She said softly “If Kalahira allows it, I will meet you by the Shores. If she doesn’t…I swear to you, Thane Krios, I will still meet you by the Shores. There we’ll have more time.”

She moved her hand to hold his, he squeezed her hand and said “I have no doubt of it. I will await your visit.”

She assured him “Irikah will be waiting for you. All the weight you have carried without complaint, with all your strength, will be gone. The pain of this brief life will be over.”

Thane’s hand squeezed hers, he coughed once and said “By your will may it be so, and may I see you, but not too soon, Siha.”

She smiled and said “Not too soon. You rest now. I’ll catch up in a little bit.”

Thane smiled, and then the smile faded, his breath eased as she held Thane’s hand through Kolyat’s prayer, held his hand until his body grew colder by degrees, held his hand as the fury she’d left outside those doors seeped back into her muscles. She held it at bay for Kolyat’s sake, who stood with her, praying. She knew the prayer that was for her. She said quietly “It isn’t my place to say what you already know, that he loved you, that he regretted every moment of pain he brought to you. For my part, I believe he was raised to understand pain and to not understand love. That love…was all him. I think you saved his soul when you tried to follow in his footsteps. I hope you know that. When he said you were the only good thing he’d ever added to the world…that was his truth.”

Kolyat stood strong, said quietly “He told me you were the first person whose help he not only needed, but wanted. I don’t pretend to understand him, but I do know that because of you, he wished to add more good to the worlds. Thank you, Commander Shepard.”

Shepard said “Please, call me Viola. I’m not sure if you can understand, and I hope it isn’t rude or an imposition, but I consider you family. If there is anything that you want, that you need, if there is anything I can do to help, please ask me.”

Kolyat ducked his head, raised it again and then said “Thank you…Viola. From what he told me of you, I believe I do understand, and I am grateful.”

She nodded and then left them, wanting Kolyat to be permitted to be alone with his father, to say what perhaps he could not say in life.

oOoOoOoOoOo

She was wringing with fury, stalking her way back onto the Normandy and to her shuttle bay sanctuary, needing to hit things and unwilling to retreat to her quarters. It was too easy to imagine shattered glass and broken things.

Broken things and fun.

It took a narrow, cold sphere of control to keep from rioting in every direction.

She was still in her armor, and she didn’t want to take it off because again, rage. She’d throw it. She had to consider carefully when careful was against her nature, every possible outcome of this level of anger. She could easily put others or herself in the Med Bay or the morgue. If she tried to go back onto the Citadel she could rack up a body count. A bar and a drink and other people would be a recipe for mass murder. She wanted to hit something. At this stage, she would have difficulty discerning between friend and foe, inanimate or animate. She would only know it was in front of her. Worse, it could be in front of her and asking a question, doing something to tell her to calm down, which for her at this stage would be irresistible provocation. 

This was when the war cry of “Shepard, no!” was most predictable and deadly. She was provoked, she would stay that way, and anything in her way would pay. 

So she needed to focus. She needed to exhaust this well of grieving rage before it overwhelmed her, bleed it off in strikes and imagined vengeance before it turned into the blind Berserker’s fury she knew too well. 

Even Garrus had stayed out of her way. She leaned her rifle up against the outside of the enclosure, betting it would be gone before she left. She had no idea how long it would take except that when she started holding still, it would start seeping back through her like infiltrating ink from the inside out.

She was alternating between the seeping red of rage, the blotting dark ink of ‘fun’ and the cold recesses of empathizing with Thane. She’d hear his rasping voice and his wet cough, hear the word ‘fun’ and see Kolyat’s face, each moment feeding into something that had to be herded toward exhaustion, its expression volatile and potentially deadly. To someone else. She never worried about herself in this state. 

Javik was there and she looked through him at the bag, waved a hand and said “Move.”

He did, to the side, leaning against the enclosure’s padded supports.

She started hammering at the heavy bag.

He watched in silence and she chose to ignore that he was there, taken by images and ideas that had nothing to do with him. She imagined this exact phenomena to be what spawned ideas of demonic possession through history. Something rising up, dark and unstoppable. He could claim Vengeance for his people, but not hers. He had gotten in her head, but right now she demanded autonomy and ignorance of any other presence. He was furniture. To focus her attention on him would provoke hitting him. She hoped he knew well enough to shut the fuck up and hold still, or leave.

Leaving on her armor added to the weight and the exertion, and over time rage bled out of her slowly, replaced by heavy dragging of her limbs. She kept at it, seemingly endless but unwilling to look up or look out. Looking at Javik would make him a target. Looking at the time and seeing too little or too much had passed, a cause for more anger. When she was heaving breath and felt gravity exert control over her body, pulling her limbs down, she felt she could walk through the ship, take off her armor, clean it, take a shower. She might have to turn right back around, put it back on and come back down here, and might have to do that every day, several times.

The secret to her success as a Commander was demonic possession. 

She turned and left, her rifle gone, her furniture ignored, her demons exercised if not exorcised.

Thane had stood for peace of mind and calm, and she had gone another way. A different, personal tradition. His philosophical curiosity or practices had no impact on her inner state. She flowed or she blew, volcanic and pressured, no rest. 

Thane had told her “Volcanoes go dormant.”

She said dismissively “Volcanoes live for eons. I have only been here for 30 or so years. It’ll last. I am not going dormant.”

Then he had asked curiously “Do you not fear burning out? Burning allies? Burning yourself?”

She had shaken her head and told him “No. I really don’t. Abundant resource. Whatever I’m made of is flame retardant. At this level of performance I have smart allies.”

He had taken the last as the intended compliment “I find I believe you.”

She never had been all that big on the concept of balance. In a fight, physically, yes. Mental balance? Not when she could opt for overwhelming force by her inherent nature. She needn’t conserve. She could lie and learn to hide it, and she had, to an extent, for the purposes of command, but she’d chosen command to channel it. Frequent opportunities for pyroclastic flow.

Philosophy aside, all the warnings she’d gotten for a lifetime to cool down to ward off burning out, she was nowhere close to it. Clearly dying hadn’t stemmed it. She also wasn’t afraid of losing to her demons. Her demons were her, and hers.

She cleaned her armor, stored it carefully, and while she was in a near blisteringly-hot shower Javik brought her dinner and quietly left.

She thought briefly…yeah, maybe he does get me. 

She was starving.

oOoOoOoOoOo

She was counseled by Anderson to slow down and appreciate the Citadel after the place had repeatedly tried to kill her. That sounded…terribly boring, but things started looking up after lots of people started shooting at her. She shot back and felt better.

She ended up in a ridiculous casino, stuck trying to look like she was socializing, which meant talking. So she tried. She told Javik “Thank you for cooking.” He’d delivered meals, sometimes staying in silence, sometimes leaving.

He responded “You are welcome.”

She asked “Should I…reimburse you or something?”

His eyes narrowed and then he looked at her evenly “You are either attempting to insult me or purposely misunderstanding. Neither one suits you.”

Well, she couldn’t really argue with that “Yeah. Okay. It wasn’t the insult thing though.”

He did not look convinced “Noted, Commander.”

…one failed hacking attempt later…

“I have noticed that your name can be shortened to Vie. ‘To compete eagerly with someone in order to do or achieve something.’”

“Really? You want me to shorten your name to Jav?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Thought so.”

…two failed hacking attempts later…

“You are truly bad at this.”

“You want to do it?”

“Yes. We could possibly leave. Being forced to…socialize…is unpleasant.”

“Well…okay. We agree there. You’re on.”

…three failed hacking attempts later…

“It is harder than it looks.”

“Right?”

“I would like to try again.”

“If this night ends up us having to kill everybody in here, I might not be sorry about that.”

“Agreed.”

…four failed hacking attempts later…

“Okay, me next.”

“If we merely killed the guards…”

“Right there with you. But no.”

“I have a plan.”

“No…now my pride’s hurt and now I HAVE to do it.”

“That is unfortunate.”

oOoOoOoOoOo

She was in a good mood. Ship saved, clone…probably a stain somewhere…shore leave called, and maybe she would check out Armax Arsenal Arena.

Javik followed her home. She was too curious about him walking at her side to say anything about it. He’d just saved her ass any number of times, wondered if he needed to have a conversation. He didn’t say anything, went to the kitchen and looked around, she followed curiously. Sadly, every cabinet and the refrigerator was empty, only the remains of pizza.

She said “I don’t really…do…domestic. Was there something you needed?”

He looked around expansively and then said “I will stay here.”

She blurted “What? No.”

His answer was to pick her up and put her on the kitchen counter. His hands moved from her waist to either side of her face, a warm trickling of pleasure from the stroke of his hands and the familiar spread of perceived pleasure fed directly into her mind. Her hands were nerveless and she only had a moment for a soft gasp before his mouth was on hers, hungry, pressing her back against the counter moment by moment, persuasive and…overwhelmingly convincing. He kissed her back, down and under, physical strokes and mental brushes and tips of his teeth, trails of his nails over her skin. He pulled back slowly and released her lower lip from between his teeth. She realized she’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist, biotics crackling over her body and his.

He repeated “I will stay here.”

She stared at him and only said a soft “Okay.”

He picked her up off the counter, put her on her feet, then left.

Okay.

She couldn’t even say it was weird at this point, it was just a seeming inevitability and…that was a hell of a kiss so…

She took a shower and thought about Prothean kissing. He brought back food and clothes and made dinner. He put away his clothes upstairs, not downstairs. She kept trying to reach for objections and she…didn’t have one. She didn’t follow him around so much as…well, spy, head craning around corners when she couldn’t resist looking. She didn’t have any questions. She wanted to eat dinner and then she wanted him to touch her again, or maybe not in that order. She stayed out of the kitchen, he came and found her with a plate. They ate in silence. He still took longer to eat than she did. He had some inherent pace of savoring she lacked, so she stared at hers until he took it from, again, unresisting and mostly nerveless hands. He set it aside and this time she reached for him first, pulled him down to her, hopeful and hungry and please let humans and Protheans be compatible, not that I could look any of that up. Please.

She pulled herself up and clung to his shoulders, wrapped her legs around his waist, his hands again to either side of her face, slow and warm, soaking pleasure directly into her. Biotics crackled and hummed over skin. His hands made her ravenous, frantic, she struggled to get her shirt off. He moved his hand to support her back, tilting her back and kissing from her mouth down her throat, to her breast, tongue and tips of his pointed teeth, textured breaks in his lips rubbing over her skin, his hand on her back a warm source of radiating pleasure.

But she wasn’t a warm or a patient person, uninterested in slowing down or lingering, grabbing at his leather and cloth paneled casuals, pulling. He had to put her down or she was going to overbalance them both with her yanking. She left it to him to get the rest of his top off, she pulled up from the bottom of the fabric and spread her hands and then mouth over abdominal muscles, ridged turquoise and red. He spread the fingers of one hand through her hair, one hand carefully at the back of her neck, triggering a sparking waterfall of biotic trail down her skin and that warm flow of pleasure, contrasting slow patience from him and the streaming, near clawing rush of her exploration of his body. 

Wide open eyed she tasted and touched him, fingers finding unfamiliar contours and ridges, slick-textured skin and…no nipples. He didn’t make a sound and his muscles were solid, skin tougher, she couldn’t hear a heartbeat or feel his muscles twitch.

Didn’t know where his heart was.

Did he have one?

Don’t care.

He tasted good, smelled good, and whatever feedback she might have wanted from a lover flowed through his hand, amplifying received pleasure and feeding it back to her. She was by nature frantic and rushed, more so from feeling manipulated and outmaneuvered and dropped into something out of her control. She shrugged quickly out of the loose pants she was wearing, shimmying out of them while tasting his skin for the pleasure of it. She was not a practitioner of teasing or slow, so with her mouth on his chest, breasts pressed to his abdomen, she shoved his pants down and dragged her palm back up, looking down to see turquoise and red-ribbed cock that she wrapped her hand around and squeezed.

That earned her a huffed gasp from him, a surge in her hand and his flat palm managing to, she believed, pick up on her...enthusiasm…and intensify the pleasure streaming from his hand. She stood up suddenly, still holding onto his cock, grabbed of his hands and put it on her breast, grabbed his other hand and put it on her ass, hitched her thigh over his bone-ridged hip and swung herself up onto his body, pulling on his shoulder. He lifted her with his hand on her ass, squeezing at her breast, all golden infinity eyes wide and watching her as she guided his cock inside, fuck, yes, that. Please, that. Her head tipped back and her eyes closed, her hands digging nails into whatever his back was made of, right now she did not fucking care, she’d figure that out later. He shifted both hands to her ass, moved his mouth to her throat to lick there slowly, with his hands guiding her body up and down, her tightening her thighs to make the pace fast and hard, no patience for slow.

Biotics raced over her skin, conscious and subconscious mental contact spiking pleasure through her spread by her own heartbeat and his hands. She was dizzy and panting, everything moving, inside, on her skin, in her head, in her blood. Like the sensation of when he was first moving things inside her mind, she felt slow rivers of emotion being turned, whirlpool built of fire and need, drawing her down, drawing her in. He moved a few steps to a table, leaned her back on it, her hands falling from his shoulders not from a command from him, he made it seem like her idea somehow. He did not stop thrusting, but he did set the pace, her legs weaker, will suspended in the draw-down and build. His mouth moved to her breast, stiff and sharp warmth. His other hand massaged her other breast, fingertips and flood. His other hand passed between them, over her clit, a shocking flood of biotic and direct streaming pleasure, too much in a strangled scream until he adjusted, gentled and shifted, angled her hips into deeper, harder thrusts. Sheer and ragged pleasure from the shared build and break moved through his hands, tremors of his limbs and a growl against the side of her throat with his teeth biting down, just right, everything just right, premonitions of future assumption of addictions and growls. The storm gathered and gained and then he let loose the hold he had on her mind, pleasure built into something she couldn’t contain herself, her head back and tense, eyes closed, hoarse scream and him keeping her from fainting, guarding that line.

He withdrew to a whimper from her and she’d been…well…too caught up in her own…well...their…thing…?

He didn’t speak, hands still on her, connected to every sensation, carrying her upstairs. She felt him say in answer to her internal questioning ‘We are not done.’

‘You didn’t finish?’

‘I did not want to.’

‘That…didn’t make you want to finish?’ She was insulted.

He admonished ‘Again, either attempting to insult me or purposely misunderstand.’

‘Just confused. I don’t have a Prothean manual.’

He considered ‘You will know when I am finished.’

‘Oh. Will I be conscious?’

He was teasing in tone ‘Only if you stop talking. Now.’

‘Okay.’

She kept her promise and he kept her from being able to form words. Impressions, yes. Preferences, definitely. Incoherent mental begging, yeah. Words, no, replaced by the sensations he could evoke, the successive storms he stirred from her skin.

It was hours before he did finish, pulling raw emotions from her and transforming them to spinning fireworks, small lessons in exploration and certainty that added up to not questioning joined thoughts or bodies. She learned he gained pleasure from each stroke of skin, patience in building exquisite sensation. Enjoyed her frantic. Enjoyed her exhausted.

So did she. ‘Lucky’ was the main word she could find.

When she was wrung of leaping biotics, frantic exploration and demand, tired and sated, his hands on her skin, mouth on hers, rocking into her slowly, he chose to share everything gathered, transformed and flooding back to her, no more guarding at the edges of consciousness, both released and lost.


	6. Chapter 6

Javik

He did not dream. Having learned from humans what dreams were, he had been horrified on her behalf as the only human for whom he cared. Protheans did not dream. It seemed humans categorized their memories in their sleep. Sleep for them seemed to consist of capricious and uncontrolled haunting when their minds were systematically shut down, reason gone and what remained consisting of wild imaginings and confusion.

He watched her now, her face in dim light composed of alien beauty in smooth skin and reflection of light in fascinating curves and planes. He knew through his fingertips that were light on her shoulders that she was not dreaming. He was haunted by wild imaginings and confusion in her case while awake. She was doing what Protheans did… reliving moments in sequence. But she was still human, and it was more familiar to her mind to be in the helpless state of dreams, something to fight as a state in her mind. They had slept with skin pressed to skin. What he’d feared and wondered was now proven. He had passed on his ability to her, the only thing she had lacked had been his hands. Once he touched her she possessed them and him.

All things Prothean moved at once in her mind as they had before, and she was in the cumulative pain of a People, invested with his memory, making history familiar to her when before it had been remote and separate. Now the stories were stitched inside her as they were in him, pulling them away would rend and she would bleed.

She had always been destined to bleed, as he had been. 

He did not regret the bleeding. That was familiar and unquestioned. He knew she would not blame him for representing and conveying truth. He shifted from his position at her back, moved her until she was under him again, still asleep, trapped in too many ways. His Vie.

He moved flawed and failing but fated hands to her face, with his focus thrown into the shifting chaos in her mind. It was easier for him to find his way than it had been the first time, but the content was more virulent and painful. She was less confused and in her sleep was doing what she did while awake. Fighting. Fighting everything. Fighting him, fighting story, fighting inevitability, fighting that this was now part of her.

Her body was brown all through, made of one thing, as her mind seemed to be, one thing. Her lips shifted in color, a glinting slide from brown at the outside to maroon inside, now pressed together to form a deep shadowed line.

Clarity would not bring her peace, but she was not a woman of peace. She was now a woman of Prothean chaos and that he could change, but only temporarily perhaps. She would now be a woman not of Prothean origin, but Prothean history and he would be there to strike back at the chaos he had created by her first touch and invoked in her with his hands and skin pressed to her while they slept.

She was accustomed to horror, but he was accustomed to these specific horrors. Though the beacon gave her much he did not know, it still came from his people, with familiar lines of design and truth. She was assaulted on all sides, with the irony being that he would attempt to distract her from what would have not existed without him as key and catalyst.

She was what remained of his People, a vibrant touchstone of memories, home and horror. She was herself and worthy of Knowing. The only other thing that would ever be worthy of Knowing would be that together they ended the threat that caused the horror that haunted her dark blindness.

She defied and fought the phantoms long past, saw the fall of worlds, each fall resonating with depth and shading of tragedies, calling those forward and adding to the cacophony. She did not know they were past, did not know the outcomes could not be changed with courage. Her mind was the essence of bared blade and exposed nerve.

He tried to return memories to where they belonged. His first foray into her mind had been confused but distinct with her overwhelmed and bleeding thought forms easily identified and categorized.

Perhaps in her sleep she had learned the stories. Now among each of the Prothean faces there was a human face. She was a mother, a soldier, a leader. She had made everything hers. She had stitched it all to the inside of her mind, the inside of her skin, now marked with Prothean history that lived in her. She was physically exhausted and vulnerable, but mentally she was defiant and determined, tireless in her will to experience each moment of the loss of a people.

His Vie was volatile and explosion was inevitable. He could not prevent her fury. That thought twisted and curled. In her case, a new streaming motivation twined with his others. He adored her fury. He felt a lurch of disorienting reality. He was Vengeance. He had always been Vengeance for himself, for his people. Now he was her Vengeance and she was his Fury. He wished for her to play out her passion not with ghosts in the dark, but on his skin. The twisting of that thought then twined and curled into what they had done, what they could do with their combined passions. Exact blood from their targets. Have her claim him as he had claimed her.

That thought caused a lurch of the realization of the incontrovertible differences between them. She could not know. Not the way he could. He closed his eyes and took a centering breath, alone with his own thoughts for the space of that breath. He must know for them both.

His hands opened wider, he held her face in his hands. He could and would see, feel and know for her.

Bringing order and purpose to the contact of their skin, he found her chaos and spinning sparks of fury. She was the center of her storm, a dervish of pain and purpose. From her perspective she was Alone and the only Witness. She did not know he was with her. Her hands were blind. His hands remained where they were, his mouth moved to hers and he made himself solid and real, the effort taut and reaching. He spoke her name in his mind, in her mind, against her lips, focused on her. He kissed her and spoke the sound ‘Vie’ against her lips, through his, repeated that until she became aware of him. She would not want his pity, but he could not help feeling it and that added another layer of contradiction to who she was, who he was, who he would say they were, with him knowing what was real and her needing to have faith in him. She did not recognize him, but his story and insistence demanded her attention. He was able to follow her attention, focus, become a face in each story.

He was soon straining, physically and mentally, his efforts backfiring. With her attention on him and his hands on her, she pulled stories that contained him from his mind to add to the poisonous whirl. With her body under his, his hands on her, the subject turned to women, Prothean women, and the fact that he had never touched one that had not tried to kill him.

The fact that ‘woman’ in his time was a story of horror, the deepest symbol of betrayal.

She pulled the direct horror out of him. Many women by the time he had been born had all been indoctrinated. He’d been one of the last generations of warriors to be sent into the greater galaxy from the sheltered crèche environment in which he was raised. The story sheared out of him in chips and flakes and painful gouges like the knapping of an arrowhead from obsidian, small pieces of the whole revealed in sharp agony.

Prothean women had all been sequestered, somewhere potentially secret, to protect them, to engineer and raise children and send them back when ready into the war effort. The ‘children’ were more fodder than offspring, invested with the hope of a people that were fading.

But this had been a plan with exposed connections to indoctrination potential the Protheans had not anticipated, and the crèches had been infiltrated, indoctrinated and converted from providing male children at accelerated rates to fight to creating indoctrinated females, sent back out into the galaxy to hunt down the remaining males.

The horror was held separate from her.

She was a woman, but she was not. Not the women he’d killed.

She was Prothean now, but she was not. She was blind and blended. He had created her state. He would guide her.

He pondered for a moment whether or not he would prefer to never have touched this primitive creature that now defined ‘woman’ and was only slightly less deadly than his previous definitions. Even more foreign than the indoctrinated of his kind that could know him through touch.

That door had closed 50,000 years ago and he would not be the leader of his people, none remaining. He would still be Vengeance. She walked the edges and lines of the mazes of the puzzles and paths, but she was separate. She was his Vie. He knew, could feel it and know it in her that if he were to fight her, she would fight him.

Some strain of purely superior capability and strength in this moment defined what he could do, who he could be, with her. He could lie and she would not know. She moved in his mind from Commander to his assessment of her at the moment. Human. Limited. Weak.

He almost felt the need to blind himself to the possibilities that occurred to him, how much power he had over her. He discovered he wasn’t only Vengeance. 

He was the only remaining Avatar of any aspect of his people. At the moment, he would embody Prothean craft, Prothean lust. All her potential paths of Fury collapsed and he could walk all her Paths safely if he wished it.

Images and visions of how her body felt when he touched her, when he was inside her, when she was Human lust and straining moans set his first action of Knowing.

The surge of ownership investing his body spread through his mind, rippled down his spine, through his hands, into her skin. He had made her who she was, regardless of her opinion on the matter. She belonged to him in every way that had meaning. He did not need her permission to pull her from the storm he had stirred in her.

His lips curved into a smile, his teeth moving to skim points along her throat. All her dark tones of skin and mind, body and heart belonged to him. His path to her was not clear, but it would be when he chose for it to be that way.

Her strange blindness gave him the sense of direction he required, his new and strange voice-lie pitched to the tone, the words that would call her to him. The conviction that he would enjoy it rather than be concerned about results was a warm lust blur. He wanted her full attention. He did not wish to explain or aid her in her quest to comprehend and battle ghosts.

She would not comprehend, he could not find his way to making that true, not knowing how to convince in words because only Prothean liars with covered hands spoke that way and he had always felt disgust for the cowards that would not be and speak the truth.

But there were gambits and guile that led to truth that carried no cowardice.

The truth was that she was in bed with him, under his body, his cock hard against her thigh. Then the truth was that one hand of his left her face and slid slowly along smooth skin to her hip, marveling in the moments of sensation of the sameness, the glide of his hand along skin that gave way and reflected light in glowing contrast to the shaded warmth of the curve of her thigh. She was graceful and delicate and if he told her that, she would despise that truth. She wished to be strong and tough in all things, yet at the moment she was not. He would see it, he would know it. He had seen it, he had known it, and that vulnerability in her smothered something she valued.

Something that was no longer true. She was not alone, she was not unseen, she was graceful and delicate and his.

He smiled and whispered to her with near overwrought sympathy, the exact tone he would despise directed to him “Viola. You are lost. It is not your responsibility. It is not your fault. Come.”

He would despise it if what was true for her in this moment was true for him, but it would never be. He would always know her. He would never be blind and he was not blended or lost. He was where he belonged. She was where she belonged, now she needed to know it, repetition and confidence creating the truth.

Her body stiffened against his, her thighs tensing and dragging a groan from him in response. The corner of his mouth tilted in a further smile, the path of his teeth followed by his tongue for no reason in his strategy except that she smelled, she tasted, she was his.

He was too much of a hunter to not find and exploit weakness.

She was too much prey at the moment and regardless of whether or not she enjoyed that state, he would.

She was pulled momentarily, stung pride and outrage, from the stories playing in her mind. He said again “You cannot stop their suffering, Vie.”

He offered her no truce and no fight. He offered her the insulting sympathy she so hated. Her mind began to swirl with the added notes of her being caught chasing mirages long turned to dust, the only real part of them being her visceral acceptance that they were as real as she was.

He told her before she was pulled back again “You are helpless, Vie. They are lies and you are believing them.”

That was his lie. They were true. But she heard, she understood, and his lie pierced her image of herself. If he fed his People, they would devour her.

If anyone was going to devour this woman, it would be him.

Her voice was an angry hiss, his words having drawn her to the present. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” She was outraged at her subjective experience and his dismissal of it, and he would substitute his objective experience. Her body was straining but not to escape. She was pulling all of her fury and rage from her human nightmares and attempting to make it more real than he was and he would not allow it.

He whispered to her, chiding and patient “Are you now deaf as well as deluded?”

Her hips and temper surged and that brought his cock inside slick heat from her spasm, with him ensuring that he finished what she began, driven inside her to the straining hilt.

He had her full attention now. She struggled with her attempt to find words to state that she was the defender of Prothean history, as she remembered who she was speaking to and her fury backfired into her experience of what he’d placed bluntly at her threshold. She sputtered as her hips did the same, a deep swallowed groan in her throat and a stuttering “Oh, fuck you… I don’t even want to call you by your name. You need a last name. What’s a good damned last name?”

His hand on her hip shifted to her ass as he hilted himself deeper in her body, then moved to hold the back of her neck, hands along that fragile expanse of thin skin.

He looked down at her as her head tilted back, her lip bitten and new reflections of the lovely curves of her face mesmerizing, all the shades of dark and red on her lips with her blunt white teeth digging into the skin and her breath sucked in suddenly.

He told her “You may call me Razis if you wish.”

Her laugh was husky as she said “That probably fucking means ‘master’ or something.”

It did. Or something. His smile told her so.

She said “Don’t call me Vie. Stupid nickname.”

“It suits you, Vie, I will call you what I wish.”

“Dammit. If you didn’t feel so damned good, I’d be really angry.”

“Wrap your legs around me, Vie.”

She did, and her hands rested on his shoulders, fingernails catching on his hard edges and digging in. A strange wisp of a thought from her blind and blended places caught his attention. She wondered if he loved her and then veered from the thought. 

He would not. “No, Vie. I do not love you. I will never love you.”

She was relieved and disappointed, rejecting both outcomes and favoring attempted cool acceptance as she tightened her thighs around him and said “Good. I don’t love you either. Using you for sex and breakfast.”

He laughed at her foreign and forlorn. He said “You love me. You have no choice.”

“Fuck OFF. Whatever your name is that I’m not saying because I can’t be sure what the Prothean word is for asshole. But you’re really good with a gun, your cock and a spatula. So I’m…” she groaned at his interrupting deep thrust and his teeth on her lips “Going to tolerate your…” He thrust hard again and she ground her hips against his and abandoned her sentence, conceded the end of it with a breathy “Fuck, you feel good. I don’t care anymore.”

She cared. He emphasized each phrase with a long stroke, pulling more groans from her, her lips seeking his through his explanation. “You can love me, Vie. You do love me. That is what you have to offer and I want that. Give it to me.”

“Maybe if breakfast is good enough – ” He was pleased with her courage but also pleased to drive into her until she lost the shadow of her defiance and sucked in a breath and exhaled “Ooooh hell.”

“I don’t love you, Vie, because love is a human word. I know you. I own you. You are mine. Love can happen or not happen, you can love me or not love me. My owning you is not something I can do or not do. It is something that is done and cannot be undone. You do not know me, your hands are blind. I can tell you, but you will not know. I can show you, but you will not know. You will never know me as I know you. You will believe or not believe. But I will always know, Vie. I will always know you. Nothing you do can change that. Love me or do not. I will always find you. I will always know you. You will always be mine. I pity you that you do not know, but I find…” He snarled at the tightening keen of pleasure building as her hands scratched down his back, her hips thrust harder and her mind felt the outline of that maze as she had felt the lives of Protheans. Separate and straining to comprehend, but unable to know.

She would need faith in him, and he did pity her as faith was a shadow and a shade of what he Knew of her.

She was still pleased with her prize of her comprehension of only the shadow of his knowing.

He was driven to where she could not comprehend because he could not, pleasure-prey-predator-pulse that was no longer him, but them, fleeting and forever. The blur of pleasure and possession gripped them both in music of the meeting of flesh and minds, his lips drawn to the light on her skin, him being the cause of darkening the surface to shade.

She said softly “You find what?”

“Hm?”

“You said you found…”

“I find… your body is sufficient compensation for your blindness.”

She punched him in the shoulder and said “Go make breakfast.”

“No.”

“You’re really unreliable with this knowing thing. I’m hungry.”

“You are not.” She was not. She wanted to hear his voice. “You wish to hear my voice.”

“Why would I want to hear you say that you don’t love me?”

“Because you are a very strange, primitive woman, my Vie.”

“Damned right.” She was proud of it, of herself, of them. He did not disagree in principle.

“Sleep.” He kissed her brow, rolled to the side and wrapped his arms around her, securing her at his side.

“Breakfast later?”

“It is not as though I am ever letting you cook.”

“Now that’s what I like to hear.”

“You, in your opinion, ‘suck’ at it.”

“I do love you.” Her voice was gentle, her eyes closed, her bravery in the truth and her faith in the reality of excellent sex and a promise of excellent breakfast. She was simultaneous now and forever, not seeing beyond the next few moments and also planning to wrench the galaxy to her will. He knew her acceptance of the real, and he was real and would be for her, always.

“I know, my Vie.”

“What does Razis mean?”

He lied to amuse her. “It means dishwasher.”

“Liar.”

He told the truth to please her and himself. “It means Guardian of the Sacred.”

“Me being sacred?”

“Yes.”

“I love you, Razis.”

“I know, my Vie.”


End file.
